Fixer uppers of the week

I find decay and ruin beautiful.

Barn of the week

One of my better shots.

Riddle me this...

How can someone who hates poor people, wants to cut the minimum wage, and who wants to give wealthy people more tax cuts claim she knows what her god is thinking when he 'sends' natural disasters? If Michele Bachmann really truly believes that her Bible contains the absolute unvarnished word of her god, then did she miss the part about rich people not getting into heaven? Jesus said that it will be easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than it will be for a rich person to enter into the kingdom of heaven. So if she missed an important passage like that, how can she claim that the hurricane and the earthquake her god 'sent' is an anti spending message?

I used to be a believer in the cult of Christianity. I read their Bible. I went to church. I went to one of the most conservative, both politically and religiously, colleges in the USA, where I had to take four classes in Bible and religion. I was surrounded by 'Christians.' So I'm very familiar with the teaching of Jesus and the wishes and desires of his deranged father. So if anything, the message the god of the Christians is sending with the hurricane and the earthquake is that the Gospels are being perverted by capitalism. Jesus commanded us to feed, clothe, and love the poor. He didn't command us to cut taxes on the rich. He'd be pretty pissed about income inequality, not that corporations are being regulated too much. Their god is mad at them for not giving all of the citizens of this country medical and dental coverage, he's not mad that we don't have enough weapons to kill everyone on the face of the earth.

Jesus also said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "What ever you did to the poor, you did to me." And we all know what people like Michele Bachmann and her pals in the Christian Taliban have been doing to the poor since 1980. Yeah, my educated guess is that Jesus and his pop are pissed at the ass reaming the Republicans and Corporate Conserva-Dems have handing out since the days of St. Ronnie Reagan and they're finally doing something about it.

Astounding

I'm astounded by this sexist comic cover from 1972. But if you think this is bad, the stories inside are even more degrading to women. On the bright side, the cute unnamed woman on the bottom left reminded me of my friend west coast pal Karen F.

Hercules responds to the latest teabagger bus tour

Deal of the week

For a buck apiece, how fancy can they be?

If Jesus had kids, he'd have sent them to public school

What didn't Jesus do?

Hey boy, who are you calling lazy?

I'm sure you saw where one of Florida's US Senators said that we're all lazy because of Social Security and Medicare. He claims that people used to work harder and take better care of one another knowing that they had to provide for their own retirement. Crazy huh. Yeah, I thought so too.

First of all, since we all pay into the Social security system through our payroll taxes we are providing for our retirement. The money in the Social Security coffers doesn't magically appear, it comes from the hard work of millions of Americans. Although millions of other Americans don't pay in their fair share since Social Security taxes are only paid on the first (roughly) $106,000 of income, that means that people making over that amount don't pay any Social Security taxes on anything over the first $106,000. Which means that people making $50,000 a year pay a higher percentage of their income in Social security taxes than someone making $500,000 a year. Crazy huh. Yeah, I thought so too.

Secondly, I'm not lazy and neither are the hundreds of other millions of working class Americans who either paid into the system or are still paying into the system. I started working and paying Social Security taxes when I was 13. And I worked full time, with the exception of a few layoffs in the mid 1990's ever since, until I had my heart attack in 2004. I worked summers during high school, I work odd jobs during my college years, and when I left college in 1985, I went right to work, I didn't go onto grad school. Hell, I didn't want to go to grad school, I wanted to get out in the world and work. And work I did.

I worked a series of shit jobs that were physically and mentally demanding. I worked my way up through a convenience store system to become manager. I worked in a dinner theatre for tips. When I lived in Roanoke I worked two jobs to pay the bills and keep a roof over my head. I worked a a cement pipe factory doing some of the hardest work I have ever done in my life. When I hit my 30's I finally had a series of better paying jobs but I still worked my ass off. When I was in the truck tire business I not only had to handle the office end of the job, I had to stack and load truck tires that weighed over 200 lbs each. I would go home some days so weak and tired that I could barely lift my arms, but I kept at it. When I went into sales even though I wasn't doing as physically demanding a job I was still working hard. If you ever had to demonstrate a product or sell a disinterested person advertising or a cancer insurance policy, you know what I mean, who ever said sales was easy was a fucking liar.

I worked hard. Just like teachers, cops, firemen, waitresses, cooks, janitors, librarians, and other working class people. And just like them I paid my Social Security taxes in to the system. I paid them gladly at times and at others, when I was broke, I grumbled when I paid them. My money kept other going and deep down I was glad to help.

Then in 2004 I had a massive heart attack and once my cardiologist said that a return to work wasn't in the cards for me, I applied for Social Security Disability (SSDI). It took me over a year to get it and I had to hire an attorney to help me get what I had coming to me, which is a fucking travesty if you ask me. Some people who get SSDI at a youngish age say they feel guilty about getting it but not me. After all, I had paid into the system for over 30 years, I met the criteria for disability, and by gawd, I'm happy to get mine while I can. And you know what? Even though I don't pay Social Security taxes anymore I still pay into the system indirectly by helping to pay the wages of the employees of various businesses via my patronage.

So for this elitist creep from Florida to tell me I'm lazy, well he's full of shit. He's got no idea how hard I worked and how much I paid into the system. He sits on his ass and makes judgments about people while he sucks at the government teat. He doesn't pay Social Security taxes on his entire Senate salary, let alone whatever he steals, oops, earns outside of the US Senate.

Hey you hypocritical wet behind the ears junior Senator from Florida, kiss my working class ass. I'm not fucking lazy and neither are the millions of other Americans who pay Social Security taxes on their entire income. If you ask me, you're the fucking lazy one. You're the one who doesn't pay his fair share. You're the one who wants to shred what little is left of the social safety net so your cronies in big business can make more obscene profits. And I hope you're the one who goes belly up in the next financial panic. It would serve you right if you had to go out and actually work for a fucking change.

Luke Cage scoffs at you

I hit the five for a dollar boxes at my local comic book shop hard today. But not as hard as Like Cage will hit you if you piss him off.

Cooking with Dr. Monkey

Today's episode: oven roasted tomato sauce!

I started by buying a box of locally grown Roma tomatoes:
I like to use Romas for this sauce because they're less watery than other tomatoes. I've made this recipe with canning tomatoes but it was far more labor intensive than this one with Romas is.
I sliced off the tops of the tomatoes and I made an 'X' in the bottoms of them all, tossing out any rotten ones of course.
Then I scalded them in boiling water. I put them in the boiling water for a couple of minutes then I fish them out with my big ol' holey spoon and I drop them into a big ice water filled container.
The skins slide right off and I them break the tomatoes into smaller pieces and I put them in to my Pyrex pans. I add a few cloves of garlic to each pan of the tomatoes.
Before I had started scalding and peeling my tomatoes I had sliced up one big yellow onion and two big red bell peppers. I then covered them with extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, and pepper. I then broiled them in the oven until the skin on the pepper turned black. The broiled onions and peppers cooled while I got the Romas ready for oven roasting.
After I got all my tomatoes scalded, peeled, and in my Pyrex pans I peeled the red peppers and put them in my mini food processor along with the onions and all the olive oil from the roasting pan. I pulsed it until it became a paste and I put the paste on top of the tomatoes:
I also put in a little more sea salt, crushed black pepper, and some ground oregano, which we grew and dried our selves. Then I put all the pans in the oven and turned it on to 400 F.
I let them cook on 400 for about 30 minutes then I turned the temp down to 350. They cooked at 350 for about an hour then I turned them down to 300. After cooking for about an hour on 3oo I turned them down to 250 and let them cook up for another hour. The smell of slow roasted tomatoes makes the house smell heavenly.

After cooking for about 4 hours I took my tomatoes out and I poured each pan in my big sieve. This drains off most of the water and it leaves the pulpy slow cooked tomato mixture. I then consolidated all the tomatoes into two big Pyrex pans and I put them back in the oven which I turned back up to 300 F.
A word of warning: be very very careful when draining the hot pans of the excess liquid. The tomatoes have a tendency to slide everywhere and the water is searingly hot. BE CAREFUL.

I let the now consolidated tomato mixture cook down for another hour and fifteen minutes and then I took them out and spooned them in to my big food processor. I pulsed up batches of the thick rich sauce until I all of the tomato mixture was sauced. This is what it looked like by the time I got done:
It was almost thick enough to stand a spoon up in. The flavors had condensed and concentrated in the five plus hours that I cooked it. I had planned to can this batch of sauce but I really couldn't get into boiling a huge pan of water, sterilizing my jars and lids, and then gingerly putting the hot jars in a boiling water bath. So I decided to freeze this batch instead. That meant that I had to let the sauce cool down a bit and then I had to spoon it into freezer safe containers.

And here's the end product:
This recipe kicks all kinds of ass. It's super tasty and thick and rich. When you heat it up later you can use it on pasta, pizza, meatloaf, put it in soups, or even spread it on a piece of bread. It's also versatile in that you can freeze it for up to six months or you can can it and use it within a year, as long as you store it away from direct sunlight. Yes, you won't get a huge yield out of your big box of tomatoes, but what you do get is incredibly tasty. I don't recommend adding any kind of meat to the sauce until you get ready to reheat it, home canners can't achieve the high temps that are needed to kill all the bacteria in meats.

Of course you can add any other spices, veggies, or herbs to your sauce, I like to keep mine simple and add to it when I get ready to reheat it. You can also make this sauce if you have home canned tomatoes or make it with store bought cans of tomatoes if you like. The key is slow roasting and draining off the water in the tomatoes as you cook them down. This is my third batch that I made from fresh tomatoes and I may do another but I'll probably just can some tomatoes outright and make more sauce when I need to warm the house up in the dead of winter.

So, Swedes, what've you up to lately?

"I've been trying to kill this existential dread by marrying horses and playing chess with death. What? You didn't think you'd get through a post about Sweden without an Ingmar Bergman film reference did you?"

"I'm working as a life coach but as you can tell by the gun pointed to my head, it's not going too well."

"Mmmpphh..."

"We've taken to reenacting ABBA videos and scenes from The Matrix during the long dark months of winter."

"I'm the happiest woman in all of Sweden. I just got my immigration papers and I'm headed to the tropical paradise we know as Norway. I hope to meet a lonely disaffected loner with lots of rage who might go postal at any time. You know, to balance me and my happiness."

Good gawd y'all

The only good god is a made up one. And for a guy who was allegedly born in Israel, this Jesus dude looks awfully Caucasian, almost Nordic actually. But who am I to question since he moves in mysterious ways and all.

The Perils of Public Education

Greetings you disgusting internet users. I'm Skippy Koch, the oft forgotten Koch brother. I'm a teabagger just like my brothers and the thing I hate more than unions, more than gay marriage, more than regulations on banks and business, is public education. It's a waste of money, time, and resources.

If the Communist riddled public school system was really beneficial it would teach children to shut up and never question captains of industry like me and my brothers. Instead it teaches them that none of them should be left behind, that they are valuable people, and the old Communist pastime, how to stand in lines:
And yes, I know that the homosensuals have infiltrated public schools with their gay agenda. Here's a photo of a PE teacher showing kids in his class how to bugger someone from behind:
Sick. Sick. Sick.

Kids in schools today aren't learning things like how to shine the shoes of their betters or how to serve corporations more effectively. Instead they're using schools to drain your local community of tax dollars that go to frivolous things like medical attention to kids that are clearly faking illness. It's obvious to anyone with half a brain that the little girl in the photo below can work despite having a 'foot problem.' I know damn well that if I kicked those crutches out from under her freeloading arms she'd fall down and be able to pick peas and beans and other food crops.
Kids in schools today demand to be coddled in other ways as well. They demand play time so that they can dress up in silly costumes and mock the ruling classes.
They also love race mixing as well as you can see.

Let's face it America, if you have to pay more and more taxes to support these little brats who should be working instead of sitting on their little asses then instead of being able to afford boxes of mac and cheese, fancy mustards, bologna, and fortified wine, you'll have to eat goldfish.
But dang it, those 'fancy' goldfish will be out of your budget range and you'll have to settle for the floaters in the tanks at Wal Mart.

Let's take a page from the book of foreign schools and do things on the cheap like they do. If we have classes outside then we won't have to do maintenance on big expensive schools anymore, and in fact, we can sell them off to deserving corporations.
We can teach kids how to carry things on their heads like they do in Africa. See, if kids are carrying things, then they don't have time to ask for things like free lunches, milk, pencils, and attention.

We could also adopt the European practice of ritualized murder of Christian children. Less kids in our public schools means we can have less public education and we wipe out a generation of annoying do gooder Christians. It's a win win.

All right internets readers, that's all I have time for. I have to go detail my big brother's cars and iron their underwear, it's important they look good when they go out to oppress you and yours. Bye for now.

Alive and kicking

I had a cardio stress test this morning in Knoxville. After the test we wandered and drove around and among the photos I snapped were these:





I'm awaiting the results of the test but the fact that they didn't whisk me into surgery whilst taking the test is a heartening development.

Industrial art

Art is where you find it. And I found this near Saluda, NC.

Disapproving girl

Disapproves of you and yours.

Found photos that go together

I can easily imagine this early 1970's just married couple
spending their honeymoon in this motel:
The motel is the Continental Motel and Lobster House Restaurant in Williamsburg, VA. It featured 41 air conditioned rooms, wall to wall carpeting, a TV in every room, private tiled baths, steam heat, and free coffee. It's just the sort of slice of vacation paradise that our chubby newlywed couple from Wisconsin might have enjoyed.

(The top photo comes from a packet of 20 photos I bought for a buck in an antique store in NC and the motel postcard was fifty cents from the same store.)

Who would Jesus pummel to death?

I hate the death penalty. It doesn't deter crime, if it did then we wouldn't have any more crime when you consider all the people we've put to death ever since the Supreme Court decided in the late 1970's that the death penalty isn't cruel or unusual punishment. And with as many people as the state of Texas has murdered in the name of justice, then the fucking lone star state ought to be the most crime free paradise on earth. But of course, it's not. And it never will be no matter how many people they kill down there.

So, having said how much I hate it, I do support death as punishment to one group of criminals and that group is people who murder and rape children.
And the case of the Christian couple who literally spanked their adopted child to death pisses me off more than anything. These idiots claim the god they can't see, which they profess to love, worship, and obey, wants them to brutalize, terrorize, and whip the child they can see because it pleases him. These fucking monsters, who I hope get beaten, raped, and murdered in jail, singled out a defenseless 7 year old girl for beating after beating because they thought it made their god happy. Once again, if that shit makes their god happy, then I'm ever so glad I don't believe in him or any other gods.

And please Christians, don't you fucking dare try to tell me that they aren't 'true Christians' because a 'true Christian' wouldn't do something like that. We all know that's bullshit. Time after time you people have shown yourselves to be the most violent, the most hateful, the most intolerant, the most awful people ever to walk this earth.

I grew up in an era when people spanked their kids. My mom spanked us, my siblings and I, and really, it didn't teach me anything except to lie and do whatever I could to avoid getting spanked again. The crazy aunt who I had to live with after my mother passed away spanked us. She and her husband both spanked, hit, threw things like pots and pans at us, and they got off on it. Aunt Rageholic got off on controlling others and making people bend to her twisted will. The only thing her violence against me and my siblings taught me was how to be more violent. And when the worst of her comes out in me, one can't live in environments like that and not be affected by it, I fucking hate it. I want to slink away and wash that awful part of my up bringing away forever. I hate what that woman, her husband, and her kids did to me and my siblings. See, they all claimed to be good Christians when they hit, spanked, and mentally abused us kids too.

These people who brutalized the little girl and her adopted siblings are scum, just like my dead aunt and her husband. The use their religion as a cover for their violent urges and desires. They deserve to have the full weight of the judicial system come down on them until they suffer like the child they killed suffered, until they feel what they put their adopted kids through. And honestly, the fact that these idiot Christians were able to adopt so many kids should have raised a red warning flag to someone, people like them don't adopt that many kids because they love them, they adopt that many kids because they want to exert control over them, just like my crazy dead aunt did.

Spanking doesn't work. The death penalty doesn't work. And as we've seen time and time again, Christianity doesn't work. In fact, judging by these child abusers, the Norway shooter, the jackals at Westboro Baptist, the homophobic hatemongers in churches everywhere, Christianity brings out the worst in people.

Every day they make me glad I'm an atheist. EVERY. FUCKING. DAY.

Barn of the week

Barely there edition:

No

No.

Nope.

Negative.

No sirree.

You will not be getting any phone number out of me Google. I will not give it to you no matter how many times you ask me to.

And fuck off for asking me.

You too Facebook.

Bring on the idiots!

A crowd of hardcore Republicans reacts to the news that Tim Pawlenty has ended his run for the Republican nomination:


Michele Bachmann wins the Ames straw poll after busing in supporters to vote for her. Sorry Michele, there aren't enough buses in the world for you to pack with people to make you POTUS.

Ron Paul (R=Racist, TX) finishes second in the Iowa straw poll and he gets no love. His racist rants come to light and they get no press. What's a cranky old man who wants to privatize everything under the sun got to do to get love? Blow a guy in an airport? Get caught drunk driving? Father a hateful racist eye doctor who grows up to be a Senator from KY?

Rick Perry says that Obama could have chosen to serve his country by serving in the military but he chose not to do so, so that means he must not be patriotic. Gee, who the fuck does Obama and those hundreds of millions of other Americans who didn't serve in the military think they are? Fucking traitors. All right thinking people know that law abiding tax paying citizens who don't serve in the in military hate their country.

Mittens 'Flip Flop' Romney says, "Corporations are people my friend." He's wrong on both counts.

Spelling counts

I'm up for a holocaust against misspelled words in book stores. Who's with me?

Upsetting news

Little Mary was so upset that Tim Pawlenty quit the race for the Republican nomination that she cried her little eyes out. Her eyes were so full of tears that she didn't see the open manhole cover and she fell down in to the sewer.

Little Mary hit her head when she fell and it knocked some sense in to her. After she recovered she stopped hating gays and the poor. So really, T Paw dropping out was a blessing in disguise for everyone because Mary became a nicer more compassionate person and the USA dodged being saddled with a boring spineless Minnesotan President.

Canned meat update