30 Kasım 2012 Cuma

Burqa's Sneerage

To contact us Click HERE
I see where France wants to pass a law banning the burqa, and all the usual suspects are having fits about it. Including me.

Now, it might seem racist or sexist or religionist or whatever to try to legislate against “traditional” ethnic clothing, but don’t let the bleeding-heart libertarians fool you. This is about WAY more than a walking tent. It’s really about whether the West is going to be allowed to stay Western. Because, make no mistake, we’re under siege.

The burqa is merely emblematic of a raft of utterly unacceptable practices used in Islam purely and simply for male thugs to control women. Charming things like genital mutilation, “honor” killings, religiously approved polygamy and other such prehistoric attitudes clutched to male Islamic bosoms as a means to allow them to refuse being assimilated into the Western country under discussion: France, the U.K, the Netherlands, Denmark, the U.S., Scandinavia…

The burqa is NOT traditional except within a very small sphere of fundie reactionaries and in the utter civil-liberties hell that is Saudi Arabia. It’s purely political and totally unreasonable: the Koran does NOT demand it, imams have spoken out against it—gosh, they’ll probably be put under fatwa for it! Since that’s the way Islamics tend to do things—and the West has every right in the world to not put up with it.

I notice that women in Islamic countries are not allowed to do all sorts of things, like drive, and work, and be educated, and divorce their husbands, and, yes, go out in public without wearing a black shroud. So Islamics really have no business whatsoever complaining when they’re forced to abide by OUR rules, in OUR countries. They make the rules where they live, and expect outsiders and immigrants and even tourists to comply; so how dare they bitch and moan when forced to comply with the rules in ours? Turnabout is fair play.

But not, it seems, for them. Doesn’t work that way for them, oh nonononono! They issue death decrees against political cartoonists and try to kill them. They HAVE killed filmmakers who “offend” them. Resident U.K. Islamics are trying to get a separate system of justice set up just for them, superseding the fantastic British common law that has endured since Magna Carta and imposing Shari’a. Not on!

And you know, if this sounds racist, I don’t fucking care. Because it isn’t. It’s fair commentary on horrible and immoral practices. Yet that’s the card they all play, the racism one, whenever anyone dares to utter a syllable of criticism of their precious primitive ways. So, primitive AND thin-skinned… Can’t take it? Too bad! Grow up and join the rest of us.

If Islamics living in France insist on the burqa, then I think the French government should fine those who impose it on women. Severely. Or deny them citizenship. Or deport them. There’s apparently no way to make things better for those women, and the males (they’re not men…) will probably just make it worse for the ones under their domination. Countries suffering under the Islamic onslaught might also do well to reconsider letting any more of them in, too; but that’s a whole other rant, as is the rant against homegrown nonsense along these very lines preached and practiced by rabid young converts who attend terrorist mosques.

If ignorant immigrant Islamics insist on bringing their 1st-century goatherder attitudes with them when they move for economic reasons into 21st-century Western societies, they need to be firmly shown (a) the error of their ways, and (b) the border, on their way back home to the medieval satrapies they fled. They’re only here because they can make more money and live more comfortably than they can at home without ever having to participate in our national lives.

Listen, when you come to the West to live, you live by OUR laws and OUR ways. Not yours. As many immigrants of many cultures do. If you can’t manage that, or don’t want to, stay in the desert, or go back to it.

What REALLY gets up my nose is that Islamics pass off all this as "religion." It's not. It's primitive, sexist, racist cultural practices, and it has GOT to change. Before it destroys everybody. Oh, wait, isn't that what they want, and what their "holy" book tells them they must do?

Well, Christians and Jews got past being told in THEIR book to stone to death people who wear cloth of two different threads or plant two different crops next to each other and to sell their own children into slavery.
I'm sure that a race of people who invented higher mathematics and had public street lighting and public gardens in Spain when the rest of Europe was living in filth and ignorance can certainly manage to take the parts that have real spirit and relevance, and leave behind the rest.

If they want to.

Islam badly needs and requires a Martin Luther, or even a Dr. Martin Luther King...

California Beamin'

To contact us Click HERE


Man, turn around and rhere's another month gone...still, it's been busy around here on so many fronts...

Just got back from a week in LA, staying with friends in Malibu. Business first, then a lovely drive up to Big Sur from Monday to Wednesday. Stayed in an adorable little cabin-style renovated motel called Glen Oaks, deep amongst oaks and redwoods, looks nondescript from outside but the rooms are terrific: stone floors in the bathroom with underfloor heating, gas fireplace in the wall, Asian decor. Clean and elegant. No TV, alas, so I will have to do some catching up online.

I saw deer outside my window when I woke up, and a flock of wild turkeys clomped around on the roof, and I tried to sleep under a barrage of acorns, like little, or not so little, bombs falling from great heights. Those oaks are TALL. Not as tall as the redwoods, though: how amazing those trees are. Also saw elephant seals in a rookery, and sea otters in the wonderful Monterey Aquarium (no humpback whales...I've watched that Star Trek movie too often), and the glorious San Carlos mission in Carmel, where Father Serra himself is buried (shoutout to Franciscans!).

We ate like kings: the first night at Deetjen's Big Sur Inn, a hippie/hobbit delight of a place where I will absolutely stay if ever I go back there, I had pork tenderloin wrapped in smoked bacon with a mushroom/apple/red wine au jus and a parmesan polenta cake on the side, with the best crab cakes EVER for appetizers. Sublime. THe second night we had dinner at this famous place Nepenthe, perched on a crag overlooking the ocean, almost as good: I had duck in an Asian BBQ glaze with basmati rice, my traveling companion had chicken with sage stuffing, and we split homemade Dutch apple pie with vanilla ice cream. And breakfasts at a tiny cafe right next to the motel: pancakes recommended.

The coastline is every bit as gorgeous as it looks on TV: ocean, rocks, trees. But I thought the Ventana Wilderness/Los Padres National Forest, which we had to pass through on the way up that terrifying Highway 1, was even more gorgeous. Huge heaped rocks, mountains shouldering their way down to the water, hairpin turns...fabulous.

Then back to LA, and home on Thursday. Altogether a most excellent adventure.

I Say, It's My Birthday!

To contact us Click HERE
Kind of crept up on me this year...nothing special planned. A quiet day as usual, with filet mignon for dinner and chocolate pound cake w/vanilla ice cream and one candle. And of course a rummage on eBay for a smallish present to myself, nothing extravagant---perhaps a pretty teapot, as I've been getting into cuppa territory recently.

I don't really have anything profound to say on turning 66. It certainly doesn't feel ancient or anything; though a few joints have gotten a little creakier, all else is much the same. The plans for last year (TV series) fell through, sadly and disappointingly, but this year I'm going to try to knock out two books to make up for it. Apart from that, no real resolutions except the usual: go to the gym and work out more, get out more with friends, GET some more local friends, tidy up my bomb site of an apartment...like that.

But those are all good things to plan, and not so extravagant as to be impossible of achievement. On the whole, and with a few exceptions, I'm well pleased with how my life has turned out. And that's nice to be able to say. At least I think it is...

Martin's Fabulous Feast, Baltimore, MD

To contact us Click HERE
Martin’s Fabulous FeastDate:  Saturday, August 4, 2012Time:  1pm thru 5pmPlace:  Baltimore, MarylandPrice:   $106.99 per person

MARTIN’S FABULOUS FEAST
OLD FASHIONED CRAB FEAST #3steamed hard crabs featuring
Our Homemade Crab Soup/Soup du Jour
Shrimp Creole with Rice
Choice Roast Sirloin of BeefFried Fillet of Fish
Fresh Sweet Golden Corn
Pasta Primavera
Shredded Beef B-B-Q
Slices of Fresh Melons


All Feasts Include:OUR GOURMET HOT BUFFET
  • Bar-B-Que Maryland Chicken
  • Martin’s Famous All Beef Jumbo Hot Dogs
  • Creamy Mashed Potatoes with Homemade Gravy
  • Fresh Barrel Cured Sauerkraut
  • Vegetable DuJour
FRESHLY PREPARED COLD BUFFET
~ Chef’s Own Homemade Cold Salads ~
  • Seafood Salad 
  • Creamy Cole Slaw
  • Potato Salad 
  • Homemade Chicken 


A FABULOUS FRESH SALAD BAR
Tossed Greens with a Huge Array of Fixin’s and Condiments
THE “BAKERY” DEPARTMENT
  • Assorted Dinner Rolls 
  • Hot Dog Rolls
  • Variety of Sliced Bread 
FROM THE TAVERN
(dispensed by our Friendly Bartenders)
  • Ice Cold Beer on Tap
  • Salted Pretzels and Crispy Potato Chips
  • Assorted Soda, Set-Ups And Ice
THE DESSERT DEPARTMENT
  • Jello & Fruit Cocktail
  • Assorted Pastries and Sheetcakes
  • Coffee Station with Regular, Decaf & Tea

29 Kasım 2012 Perşembe

Burqa's Sneerage

To contact us Click HERE
I see where France wants to pass a law banning the burqa, and all the usual suspects are having fits about it. Including me.

Now, it might seem racist or sexist or religionist or whatever to try to legislate against “traditional” ethnic clothing, but don’t let the bleeding-heart libertarians fool you. This is about WAY more than a walking tent. It’s really about whether the West is going to be allowed to stay Western. Because, make no mistake, we’re under siege.

The burqa is merely emblematic of a raft of utterly unacceptable practices used in Islam purely and simply for male thugs to control women. Charming things like genital mutilation, “honor” killings, religiously approved polygamy and other such prehistoric attitudes clutched to male Islamic bosoms as a means to allow them to refuse being assimilated into the Western country under discussion: France, the U.K, the Netherlands, Denmark, the U.S., Scandinavia…

The burqa is NOT traditional except within a very small sphere of fundie reactionaries and in the utter civil-liberties hell that is Saudi Arabia. It’s purely political and totally unreasonable: the Koran does NOT demand it, imams have spoken out against it—gosh, they’ll probably be put under fatwa for it! Since that’s the way Islamics tend to do things—and the West has every right in the world to not put up with it.

I notice that women in Islamic countries are not allowed to do all sorts of things, like drive, and work, and be educated, and divorce their husbands, and, yes, go out in public without wearing a black shroud. So Islamics really have no business whatsoever complaining when they’re forced to abide by OUR rules, in OUR countries. They make the rules where they live, and expect outsiders and immigrants and even tourists to comply; so how dare they bitch and moan when forced to comply with the rules in ours? Turnabout is fair play.

But not, it seems, for them. Doesn’t work that way for them, oh nonononono! They issue death decrees against political cartoonists and try to kill them. They HAVE killed filmmakers who “offend” them. Resident U.K. Islamics are trying to get a separate system of justice set up just for them, superseding the fantastic British common law that has endured since Magna Carta and imposing Shari’a. Not on!

And you know, if this sounds racist, I don’t fucking care. Because it isn’t. It’s fair commentary on horrible and immoral practices. Yet that’s the card they all play, the racism one, whenever anyone dares to utter a syllable of criticism of their precious primitive ways. So, primitive AND thin-skinned… Can’t take it? Too bad! Grow up and join the rest of us.

If Islamics living in France insist on the burqa, then I think the French government should fine those who impose it on women. Severely. Or deny them citizenship. Or deport them. There’s apparently no way to make things better for those women, and the males (they’re not men…) will probably just make it worse for the ones under their domination. Countries suffering under the Islamic onslaught might also do well to reconsider letting any more of them in, too; but that’s a whole other rant, as is the rant against homegrown nonsense along these very lines preached and practiced by rabid young converts who attend terrorist mosques.

If ignorant immigrant Islamics insist on bringing their 1st-century goatherder attitudes with them when they move for economic reasons into 21st-century Western societies, they need to be firmly shown (a) the error of their ways, and (b) the border, on their way back home to the medieval satrapies they fled. They’re only here because they can make more money and live more comfortably than they can at home without ever having to participate in our national lives.

Listen, when you come to the West to live, you live by OUR laws and OUR ways. Not yours. As many immigrants of many cultures do. If you can’t manage that, or don’t want to, stay in the desert, or go back to it.

What REALLY gets up my nose is that Islamics pass off all this as "religion." It's not. It's primitive, sexist, racist cultural practices, and it has GOT to change. Before it destroys everybody. Oh, wait, isn't that what they want, and what their "holy" book tells them they must do?

Well, Christians and Jews got past being told in THEIR book to stone to death people who wear cloth of two different threads or plant two different crops next to each other and to sell their own children into slavery.
I'm sure that a race of people who invented higher mathematics and had public street lighting and public gardens in Spain when the rest of Europe was living in filth and ignorance can certainly manage to take the parts that have real spirit and relevance, and leave behind the rest.

If they want to.

Islam badly needs and requires a Martin Luther, or even a Dr. Martin Luther King...

California Beamin'

To contact us Click HERE


Man, turn around and rhere's another month gone...still, it's been busy around here on so many fronts...

Just got back from a week in LA, staying with friends in Malibu. Business first, then a lovely drive up to Big Sur from Monday to Wednesday. Stayed in an adorable little cabin-style renovated motel called Glen Oaks, deep amongst oaks and redwoods, looks nondescript from outside but the rooms are terrific: stone floors in the bathroom with underfloor heating, gas fireplace in the wall, Asian decor. Clean and elegant. No TV, alas, so I will have to do some catching up online.

I saw deer outside my window when I woke up, and a flock of wild turkeys clomped around on the roof, and I tried to sleep under a barrage of acorns, like little, or not so little, bombs falling from great heights. Those oaks are TALL. Not as tall as the redwoods, though: how amazing those trees are. Also saw elephant seals in a rookery, and sea otters in the wonderful Monterey Aquarium (no humpback whales...I've watched that Star Trek movie too often), and the glorious San Carlos mission in Carmel, where Father Serra himself is buried (shoutout to Franciscans!).

We ate like kings: the first night at Deetjen's Big Sur Inn, a hippie/hobbit delight of a place where I will absolutely stay if ever I go back there, I had pork tenderloin wrapped in smoked bacon with a mushroom/apple/red wine au jus and a parmesan polenta cake on the side, with the best crab cakes EVER for appetizers. Sublime. THe second night we had dinner at this famous place Nepenthe, perched on a crag overlooking the ocean, almost as good: I had duck in an Asian BBQ glaze with basmati rice, my traveling companion had chicken with sage stuffing, and we split homemade Dutch apple pie with vanilla ice cream. And breakfasts at a tiny cafe right next to the motel: pancakes recommended.

The coastline is every bit as gorgeous as it looks on TV: ocean, rocks, trees. But I thought the Ventana Wilderness/Los Padres National Forest, which we had to pass through on the way up that terrifying Highway 1, was even more gorgeous. Huge heaped rocks, mountains shouldering their way down to the water, hairpin turns...fabulous.

Then back to LA, and home on Thursday. Altogether a most excellent adventure.

I Say, It's My Birthday!

To contact us Click HERE
Kind of crept up on me this year...nothing special planned. A quiet day as usual, with filet mignon for dinner and chocolate pound cake w/vanilla ice cream and one candle. And of course a rummage on eBay for a smallish present to myself, nothing extravagant---perhaps a pretty teapot, as I've been getting into cuppa territory recently.

I don't really have anything profound to say on turning 66. It certainly doesn't feel ancient or anything; though a few joints have gotten a little creakier, all else is much the same. The plans for last year (TV series) fell through, sadly and disappointingly, but this year I'm going to try to knock out two books to make up for it. Apart from that, no real resolutions except the usual: go to the gym and work out more, get out more with friends, GET some more local friends, tidy up my bomb site of an apartment...like that.

But those are all good things to plan, and not so extravagant as to be impossible of achievement. On the whole, and with a few exceptions, I'm well pleased with how my life has turned out. And that's nice to be able to say. At least I think it is...

Martin's Fabulous Feast, Baltimore, MD

To contact us Click HERE
Martin’s Fabulous FeastDate:  Saturday, August 4, 2012Time:  1pm thru 5pmPlace:  Baltimore, MarylandPrice:   $106.99 per person

MARTIN’S FABULOUS FEAST
OLD FASHIONED CRAB FEAST #3steamed hard crabs featuring
Our Homemade Crab Soup/Soup du Jour
Shrimp Creole with Rice
Choice Roast Sirloin of BeefFried Fillet of Fish
Fresh Sweet Golden Corn
Pasta Primavera
Shredded Beef B-B-Q
Slices of Fresh Melons


All Feasts Include:OUR GOURMET HOT BUFFET
  • Bar-B-Que Maryland Chicken
  • Martin’s Famous All Beef Jumbo Hot Dogs
  • Creamy Mashed Potatoes with Homemade Gravy
  • Fresh Barrel Cured Sauerkraut
  • Vegetable DuJour
FRESHLY PREPARED COLD BUFFET
~ Chef’s Own Homemade Cold Salads ~
  • Seafood Salad 
  • Creamy Cole Slaw
  • Potato Salad 
  • Homemade Chicken 


A FABULOUS FRESH SALAD BAR
Tossed Greens with a Huge Array of Fixin’s and Condiments
THE “BAKERY” DEPARTMENT
  • Assorted Dinner Rolls 
  • Hot Dog Rolls
  • Variety of Sliced Bread 
FROM THE TAVERN
(dispensed by our Friendly Bartenders)
  • Ice Cold Beer on Tap
  • Salted Pretzels and Crispy Potato Chips
  • Assorted Soda, Set-Ups And Ice
THE DESSERT DEPARTMENT
  • Jello & Fruit Cocktail
  • Assorted Pastries and Sheetcakes
  • Coffee Station with Regular, Decaf & Tea

Rhode Island News

To contact us Click HERE


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28 Kasım 2012 Çarşamba

Martin's Fabulous Feast, Baltimore, MD

To contact us Click HERE
Martin’s Fabulous FeastDate:  Saturday, August 4, 2012Time:  1pm thru 5pmPlace:  Baltimore, MarylandPrice:   $106.99 per person

MARTIN’S FABULOUS FEAST
OLD FASHIONED CRAB FEAST #3steamed hard crabs featuring
Our Homemade Crab Soup/Soup du Jour
Shrimp Creole with Rice
Choice Roast Sirloin of BeefFried Fillet of Fish
Fresh Sweet Golden Corn
Pasta Primavera
Shredded Beef B-B-Q
Slices of Fresh Melons


All Feasts Include:OUR GOURMET HOT BUFFET
  • Bar-B-Que Maryland Chicken
  • Martin’s Famous All Beef Jumbo Hot Dogs
  • Creamy Mashed Potatoes with Homemade Gravy
  • Fresh Barrel Cured Sauerkraut
  • Vegetable DuJour
FRESHLY PREPARED COLD BUFFET
~ Chef’s Own Homemade Cold Salads ~
  • Seafood Salad 
  • Creamy Cole Slaw
  • Potato Salad 
  • Homemade Chicken 


A FABULOUS FRESH SALAD BAR
Tossed Greens with a Huge Array of Fixin’s and Condiments
THE “BAKERY” DEPARTMENT
  • Assorted Dinner Rolls 
  • Hot Dog Rolls
  • Variety of Sliced Bread 
FROM THE TAVERN
(dispensed by our Friendly Bartenders)
  • Ice Cold Beer on Tap
  • Salted Pretzels and Crispy Potato Chips
  • Assorted Soda, Set-Ups And Ice
THE DESSERT DEPARTMENT
  • Jello & Fruit Cocktail
  • Assorted Pastries and Sheetcakes
  • Coffee Station with Regular, Decaf & Tea

Burqa's Sneerage

To contact us Click HERE
I see where France wants to pass a law banning the burqa, and all the usual suspects are having fits about it. Including me.

Now, it might seem racist or sexist or religionist or whatever to try to legislate against “traditional” ethnic clothing, but don’t let the bleeding-heart libertarians fool you. This is about WAY more than a walking tent. It’s really about whether the West is going to be allowed to stay Western. Because, make no mistake, we’re under siege.

The burqa is merely emblematic of a raft of utterly unacceptable practices used in Islam purely and simply for male thugs to control women. Charming things like genital mutilation, “honor” killings, religiously approved polygamy and other such prehistoric attitudes clutched to male Islamic bosoms as a means to allow them to refuse being assimilated into the Western country under discussion: France, the U.K, the Netherlands, Denmark, the U.S., Scandinavia…

The burqa is NOT traditional except within a very small sphere of fundie reactionaries and in the utter civil-liberties hell that is Saudi Arabia. It’s purely political and totally unreasonable: the Koran does NOT demand it, imams have spoken out against it—gosh, they’ll probably be put under fatwa for it! Since that’s the way Islamics tend to do things—and the West has every right in the world to not put up with it.

I notice that women in Islamic countries are not allowed to do all sorts of things, like drive, and work, and be educated, and divorce their husbands, and, yes, go out in public without wearing a black shroud. So Islamics really have no business whatsoever complaining when they’re forced to abide by OUR rules, in OUR countries. They make the rules where they live, and expect outsiders and immigrants and even tourists to comply; so how dare they bitch and moan when forced to comply with the rules in ours? Turnabout is fair play.

But not, it seems, for them. Doesn’t work that way for them, oh nonononono! They issue death decrees against political cartoonists and try to kill them. They HAVE killed filmmakers who “offend” them. Resident U.K. Islamics are trying to get a separate system of justice set up just for them, superseding the fantastic British common law that has endured since Magna Carta and imposing Shari’a. Not on!

And you know, if this sounds racist, I don’t fucking care. Because it isn’t. It’s fair commentary on horrible and immoral practices. Yet that’s the card they all play, the racism one, whenever anyone dares to utter a syllable of criticism of their precious primitive ways. So, primitive AND thin-skinned… Can’t take it? Too bad! Grow up and join the rest of us.

If Islamics living in France insist on the burqa, then I think the French government should fine those who impose it on women. Severely. Or deny them citizenship. Or deport them. There’s apparently no way to make things better for those women, and the males (they’re not men…) will probably just make it worse for the ones under their domination. Countries suffering under the Islamic onslaught might also do well to reconsider letting any more of them in, too; but that’s a whole other rant, as is the rant against homegrown nonsense along these very lines preached and practiced by rabid young converts who attend terrorist mosques.

If ignorant immigrant Islamics insist on bringing their 1st-century goatherder attitudes with them when they move for economic reasons into 21st-century Western societies, they need to be firmly shown (a) the error of their ways, and (b) the border, on their way back home to the medieval satrapies they fled. They’re only here because they can make more money and live more comfortably than they can at home without ever having to participate in our national lives.

Listen, when you come to the West to live, you live by OUR laws and OUR ways. Not yours. As many immigrants of many cultures do. If you can’t manage that, or don’t want to, stay in the desert, or go back to it.

What REALLY gets up my nose is that Islamics pass off all this as "religion." It's not. It's primitive, sexist, racist cultural practices, and it has GOT to change. Before it destroys everybody. Oh, wait, isn't that what they want, and what their "holy" book tells them they must do?

Well, Christians and Jews got past being told in THEIR book to stone to death people who wear cloth of two different threads or plant two different crops next to each other and to sell their own children into slavery.
I'm sure that a race of people who invented higher mathematics and had public street lighting and public gardens in Spain when the rest of Europe was living in filth and ignorance can certainly manage to take the parts that have real spirit and relevance, and leave behind the rest.

If they want to.

Islam badly needs and requires a Martin Luther, or even a Dr. Martin Luther King...

California Beamin'

To contact us Click HERE


Man, turn around and rhere's another month gone...still, it's been busy around here on so many fronts...

Just got back from a week in LA, staying with friends in Malibu. Business first, then a lovely drive up to Big Sur from Monday to Wednesday. Stayed in an adorable little cabin-style renovated motel called Glen Oaks, deep amongst oaks and redwoods, looks nondescript from outside but the rooms are terrific: stone floors in the bathroom with underfloor heating, gas fireplace in the wall, Asian decor. Clean and elegant. No TV, alas, so I will have to do some catching up online.

I saw deer outside my window when I woke up, and a flock of wild turkeys clomped around on the roof, and I tried to sleep under a barrage of acorns, like little, or not so little, bombs falling from great heights. Those oaks are TALL. Not as tall as the redwoods, though: how amazing those trees are. Also saw elephant seals in a rookery, and sea otters in the wonderful Monterey Aquarium (no humpback whales...I've watched that Star Trek movie too often), and the glorious San Carlos mission in Carmel, where Father Serra himself is buried (shoutout to Franciscans!).

We ate like kings: the first night at Deetjen's Big Sur Inn, a hippie/hobbit delight of a place where I will absolutely stay if ever I go back there, I had pork tenderloin wrapped in smoked bacon with a mushroom/apple/red wine au jus and a parmesan polenta cake on the side, with the best crab cakes EVER for appetizers. Sublime. THe second night we had dinner at this famous place Nepenthe, perched on a crag overlooking the ocean, almost as good: I had duck in an Asian BBQ glaze with basmati rice, my traveling companion had chicken with sage stuffing, and we split homemade Dutch apple pie with vanilla ice cream. And breakfasts at a tiny cafe right next to the motel: pancakes recommended.

The coastline is every bit as gorgeous as it looks on TV: ocean, rocks, trees. But I thought the Ventana Wilderness/Los Padres National Forest, which we had to pass through on the way up that terrifying Highway 1, was even more gorgeous. Huge heaped rocks, mountains shouldering their way down to the water, hairpin turns...fabulous.

Then back to LA, and home on Thursday. Altogether a most excellent adventure.

I Say, It's My Birthday!

To contact us Click HERE
Kind of crept up on me this year...nothing special planned. A quiet day as usual, with filet mignon for dinner and chocolate pound cake w/vanilla ice cream and one candle. And of course a rummage on eBay for a smallish present to myself, nothing extravagant---perhaps a pretty teapot, as I've been getting into cuppa territory recently.

I don't really have anything profound to say on turning 66. It certainly doesn't feel ancient or anything; though a few joints have gotten a little creakier, all else is much the same. The plans for last year (TV series) fell through, sadly and disappointingly, but this year I'm going to try to knock out two books to make up for it. Apart from that, no real resolutions except the usual: go to the gym and work out more, get out more with friends, GET some more local friends, tidy up my bomb site of an apartment...like that.

But those are all good things to plan, and not so extravagant as to be impossible of achievement. On the whole, and with a few exceptions, I'm well pleased with how my life has turned out. And that's nice to be able to say. At least I think it is...

27 Kasım 2012 Salı

Martin's Fabulous Feast, Baltimore, MD

To contact us Click HERE
Martin’s Fabulous FeastDate:  Saturday, August 4, 2012Time:  1pm thru 5pmPlace:  Baltimore, MarylandPrice:   $106.99 per person

MARTIN’S FABULOUS FEAST
OLD FASHIONED CRAB FEAST #3steamed hard crabs featuring
Our Homemade Crab Soup/Soup du Jour
Shrimp Creole with Rice
Choice Roast Sirloin of BeefFried Fillet of Fish
Fresh Sweet Golden Corn
Pasta Primavera
Shredded Beef B-B-Q
Slices of Fresh Melons


All Feasts Include:OUR GOURMET HOT BUFFET
  • Bar-B-Que Maryland Chicken
  • Martin’s Famous All Beef Jumbo Hot Dogs
  • Creamy Mashed Potatoes with Homemade Gravy
  • Fresh Barrel Cured Sauerkraut
  • Vegetable DuJour
FRESHLY PREPARED COLD BUFFET
~ Chef’s Own Homemade Cold Salads ~
  • Seafood Salad 
  • Creamy Cole Slaw
  • Potato Salad 
  • Homemade Chicken 


A FABULOUS FRESH SALAD BAR
Tossed Greens with a Huge Array of Fixin’s and Condiments
THE “BAKERY” DEPARTMENT
  • Assorted Dinner Rolls 
  • Hot Dog Rolls
  • Variety of Sliced Bread 
FROM THE TAVERN
(dispensed by our Friendly Bartenders)
  • Ice Cold Beer on Tap
  • Salted Pretzels and Crispy Potato Chips
  • Assorted Soda, Set-Ups And Ice
THE DESSERT DEPARTMENT
  • Jello & Fruit Cocktail
  • Assorted Pastries and Sheetcakes
  • Coffee Station with Regular, Decaf & Tea

Burqa's Sneerage

To contact us Click HERE
I see where France wants to pass a law banning the burqa, and all the usual suspects are having fits about it. Including me.

Now, it might seem racist or sexist or religionist or whatever to try to legislate against “traditional” ethnic clothing, but don’t let the bleeding-heart libertarians fool you. This is about WAY more than a walking tent. It’s really about whether the West is going to be allowed to stay Western. Because, make no mistake, we’re under siege.

The burqa is merely emblematic of a raft of utterly unacceptable practices used in Islam purely and simply for male thugs to control women. Charming things like genital mutilation, “honor” killings, religiously approved polygamy and other such prehistoric attitudes clutched to male Islamic bosoms as a means to allow them to refuse being assimilated into the Western country under discussion: France, the U.K, the Netherlands, Denmark, the U.S., Scandinavia…

The burqa is NOT traditional except within a very small sphere of fundie reactionaries and in the utter civil-liberties hell that is Saudi Arabia. It’s purely political and totally unreasonable: the Koran does NOT demand it, imams have spoken out against it—gosh, they’ll probably be put under fatwa for it! Since that’s the way Islamics tend to do things—and the West has every right in the world to not put up with it.

I notice that women in Islamic countries are not allowed to do all sorts of things, like drive, and work, and be educated, and divorce their husbands, and, yes, go out in public without wearing a black shroud. So Islamics really have no business whatsoever complaining when they’re forced to abide by OUR rules, in OUR countries. They make the rules where they live, and expect outsiders and immigrants and even tourists to comply; so how dare they bitch and moan when forced to comply with the rules in ours? Turnabout is fair play.

But not, it seems, for them. Doesn’t work that way for them, oh nonononono! They issue death decrees against political cartoonists and try to kill them. They HAVE killed filmmakers who “offend” them. Resident U.K. Islamics are trying to get a separate system of justice set up just for them, superseding the fantastic British common law that has endured since Magna Carta and imposing Shari’a. Not on!

And you know, if this sounds racist, I don’t fucking care. Because it isn’t. It’s fair commentary on horrible and immoral practices. Yet that’s the card they all play, the racism one, whenever anyone dares to utter a syllable of criticism of their precious primitive ways. So, primitive AND thin-skinned… Can’t take it? Too bad! Grow up and join the rest of us.

If Islamics living in France insist on the burqa, then I think the French government should fine those who impose it on women. Severely. Or deny them citizenship. Or deport them. There’s apparently no way to make things better for those women, and the males (they’re not men…) will probably just make it worse for the ones under their domination. Countries suffering under the Islamic onslaught might also do well to reconsider letting any more of them in, too; but that’s a whole other rant, as is the rant against homegrown nonsense along these very lines preached and practiced by rabid young converts who attend terrorist mosques.

If ignorant immigrant Islamics insist on bringing their 1st-century goatherder attitudes with them when they move for economic reasons into 21st-century Western societies, they need to be firmly shown (a) the error of their ways, and (b) the border, on their way back home to the medieval satrapies they fled. They’re only here because they can make more money and live more comfortably than they can at home without ever having to participate in our national lives.

Listen, when you come to the West to live, you live by OUR laws and OUR ways. Not yours. As many immigrants of many cultures do. If you can’t manage that, or don’t want to, stay in the desert, or go back to it.

What REALLY gets up my nose is that Islamics pass off all this as "religion." It's not. It's primitive, sexist, racist cultural practices, and it has GOT to change. Before it destroys everybody. Oh, wait, isn't that what they want, and what their "holy" book tells them they must do?

Well, Christians and Jews got past being told in THEIR book to stone to death people who wear cloth of two different threads or plant two different crops next to each other and to sell their own children into slavery.
I'm sure that a race of people who invented higher mathematics and had public street lighting and public gardens in Spain when the rest of Europe was living in filth and ignorance can certainly manage to take the parts that have real spirit and relevance, and leave behind the rest.

If they want to.

Islam badly needs and requires a Martin Luther, or even a Dr. Martin Luther King...

California Beamin'

To contact us Click HERE


Man, turn around and rhere's another month gone...still, it's been busy around here on so many fronts...

Just got back from a week in LA, staying with friends in Malibu. Business first, then a lovely drive up to Big Sur from Monday to Wednesday. Stayed in an adorable little cabin-style renovated motel called Glen Oaks, deep amongst oaks and redwoods, looks nondescript from outside but the rooms are terrific: stone floors in the bathroom with underfloor heating, gas fireplace in the wall, Asian decor. Clean and elegant. No TV, alas, so I will have to do some catching up online.

I saw deer outside my window when I woke up, and a flock of wild turkeys clomped around on the roof, and I tried to sleep under a barrage of acorns, like little, or not so little, bombs falling from great heights. Those oaks are TALL. Not as tall as the redwoods, though: how amazing those trees are. Also saw elephant seals in a rookery, and sea otters in the wonderful Monterey Aquarium (no humpback whales...I've watched that Star Trek movie too often), and the glorious San Carlos mission in Carmel, where Father Serra himself is buried (shoutout to Franciscans!).

We ate like kings: the first night at Deetjen's Big Sur Inn, a hippie/hobbit delight of a place where I will absolutely stay if ever I go back there, I had pork tenderloin wrapped in smoked bacon with a mushroom/apple/red wine au jus and a parmesan polenta cake on the side, with the best crab cakes EVER for appetizers. Sublime. THe second night we had dinner at this famous place Nepenthe, perched on a crag overlooking the ocean, almost as good: I had duck in an Asian BBQ glaze with basmati rice, my traveling companion had chicken with sage stuffing, and we split homemade Dutch apple pie with vanilla ice cream. And breakfasts at a tiny cafe right next to the motel: pancakes recommended.

The coastline is every bit as gorgeous as it looks on TV: ocean, rocks, trees. But I thought the Ventana Wilderness/Los Padres National Forest, which we had to pass through on the way up that terrifying Highway 1, was even more gorgeous. Huge heaped rocks, mountains shouldering their way down to the water, hairpin turns...fabulous.

Then back to LA, and home on Thursday. Altogether a most excellent adventure.

I Say, It's My Birthday!

To contact us Click HERE
Kind of crept up on me this year...nothing special planned. A quiet day as usual, with filet mignon for dinner and chocolate pound cake w/vanilla ice cream and one candle. And of course a rummage on eBay for a smallish present to myself, nothing extravagant---perhaps a pretty teapot, as I've been getting into cuppa territory recently.

I don't really have anything profound to say on turning 66. It certainly doesn't feel ancient or anything; though a few joints have gotten a little creakier, all else is much the same. The plans for last year (TV series) fell through, sadly and disappointingly, but this year I'm going to try to knock out two books to make up for it. Apart from that, no real resolutions except the usual: go to the gym and work out more, get out more with friends, GET some more local friends, tidy up my bomb site of an apartment...like that.

But those are all good things to plan, and not so extravagant as to be impossible of achievement. On the whole, and with a few exceptions, I'm well pleased with how my life has turned out. And that's nice to be able to say. At least I think it is...

26 Kasım 2012 Pazartesi

Martin's Fabulous Feast, Baltimore, MD

To contact us Click HERE
Martin’s Fabulous FeastDate:  Saturday, August 4, 2012Time:  1pm thru 5pmPlace:  Baltimore, MarylandPrice:   $106.99 per person

MARTIN’S FABULOUS FEAST
OLD FASHIONED CRAB FEAST #3steamed hard crabs featuring
Our Homemade Crab Soup/Soup du Jour
Shrimp Creole with Rice
Choice Roast Sirloin of BeefFried Fillet of Fish
Fresh Sweet Golden Corn
Pasta Primavera
Shredded Beef B-B-Q
Slices of Fresh Melons


All Feasts Include:OUR GOURMET HOT BUFFET
  • Bar-B-Que Maryland Chicken
  • Martin’s Famous All Beef Jumbo Hot Dogs
  • Creamy Mashed Potatoes with Homemade Gravy
  • Fresh Barrel Cured Sauerkraut
  • Vegetable DuJour
FRESHLY PREPARED COLD BUFFET
~ Chef’s Own Homemade Cold Salads ~
  • Seafood Salad 
  • Creamy Cole Slaw
  • Potato Salad 
  • Homemade Chicken 


A FABULOUS FRESH SALAD BAR
Tossed Greens with a Huge Array of Fixin’s and Condiments
THE “BAKERY” DEPARTMENT
  • Assorted Dinner Rolls 
  • Hot Dog Rolls
  • Variety of Sliced Bread 
FROM THE TAVERN
(dispensed by our Friendly Bartenders)
  • Ice Cold Beer on Tap
  • Salted Pretzels and Crispy Potato Chips
  • Assorted Soda, Set-Ups And Ice
THE DESSERT DEPARTMENT
  • Jello & Fruit Cocktail
  • Assorted Pastries and Sheetcakes
  • Coffee Station with Regular, Decaf & Tea

Burqa's Sneerage

To contact us Click HERE
I see where France wants to pass a law banning the burqa, and all the usual suspects are having fits about it. Including me.

Now, it might seem racist or sexist or religionist or whatever to try to legislate against “traditional” ethnic clothing, but don’t let the bleeding-heart libertarians fool you. This is about WAY more than a walking tent. It’s really about whether the West is going to be allowed to stay Western. Because, make no mistake, we’re under siege.

The burqa is merely emblematic of a raft of utterly unacceptable practices used in Islam purely and simply for male thugs to control women. Charming things like genital mutilation, “honor” killings, religiously approved polygamy and other such prehistoric attitudes clutched to male Islamic bosoms as a means to allow them to refuse being assimilated into the Western country under discussion: France, the U.K, the Netherlands, Denmark, the U.S., Scandinavia…

The burqa is NOT traditional except within a very small sphere of fundie reactionaries and in the utter civil-liberties hell that is Saudi Arabia. It’s purely political and totally unreasonable: the Koran does NOT demand it, imams have spoken out against it—gosh, they’ll probably be put under fatwa for it! Since that’s the way Islamics tend to do things—and the West has every right in the world to not put up with it.

I notice that women in Islamic countries are not allowed to do all sorts of things, like drive, and work, and be educated, and divorce their husbands, and, yes, go out in public without wearing a black shroud. So Islamics really have no business whatsoever complaining when they’re forced to abide by OUR rules, in OUR countries. They make the rules where they live, and expect outsiders and immigrants and even tourists to comply; so how dare they bitch and moan when forced to comply with the rules in ours? Turnabout is fair play.

But not, it seems, for them. Doesn’t work that way for them, oh nonononono! They issue death decrees against political cartoonists and try to kill them. They HAVE killed filmmakers who “offend” them. Resident U.K. Islamics are trying to get a separate system of justice set up just for them, superseding the fantastic British common law that has endured since Magna Carta and imposing Shari’a. Not on!

And you know, if this sounds racist, I don’t fucking care. Because it isn’t. It’s fair commentary on horrible and immoral practices. Yet that’s the card they all play, the racism one, whenever anyone dares to utter a syllable of criticism of their precious primitive ways. So, primitive AND thin-skinned… Can’t take it? Too bad! Grow up and join the rest of us.

If Islamics living in France insist on the burqa, then I think the French government should fine those who impose it on women. Severely. Or deny them citizenship. Or deport them. There’s apparently no way to make things better for those women, and the males (they’re not men…) will probably just make it worse for the ones under their domination. Countries suffering under the Islamic onslaught might also do well to reconsider letting any more of them in, too; but that’s a whole other rant, as is the rant against homegrown nonsense along these very lines preached and practiced by rabid young converts who attend terrorist mosques.

If ignorant immigrant Islamics insist on bringing their 1st-century goatherder attitudes with them when they move for economic reasons into 21st-century Western societies, they need to be firmly shown (a) the error of their ways, and (b) the border, on their way back home to the medieval satrapies they fled. They’re only here because they can make more money and live more comfortably than they can at home without ever having to participate in our national lives.

Listen, when you come to the West to live, you live by OUR laws and OUR ways. Not yours. As many immigrants of many cultures do. If you can’t manage that, or don’t want to, stay in the desert, or go back to it.

What REALLY gets up my nose is that Islamics pass off all this as "religion." It's not. It's primitive, sexist, racist cultural practices, and it has GOT to change. Before it destroys everybody. Oh, wait, isn't that what they want, and what their "holy" book tells them they must do?

Well, Christians and Jews got past being told in THEIR book to stone to death people who wear cloth of two different threads or plant two different crops next to each other and to sell their own children into slavery.
I'm sure that a race of people who invented higher mathematics and had public street lighting and public gardens in Spain when the rest of Europe was living in filth and ignorance can certainly manage to take the parts that have real spirit and relevance, and leave behind the rest.

If they want to.

Islam badly needs and requires a Martin Luther, or even a Dr. Martin Luther King...

California Beamin'

To contact us Click HERE


Man, turn around and rhere's another month gone...still, it's been busy around here on so many fronts...

Just got back from a week in LA, staying with friends in Malibu. Business first, then a lovely drive up to Big Sur from Monday to Wednesday. Stayed in an adorable little cabin-style renovated motel called Glen Oaks, deep amongst oaks and redwoods, looks nondescript from outside but the rooms are terrific: stone floors in the bathroom with underfloor heating, gas fireplace in the wall, Asian decor. Clean and elegant. No TV, alas, so I will have to do some catching up online.

I saw deer outside my window when I woke up, and a flock of wild turkeys clomped around on the roof, and I tried to sleep under a barrage of acorns, like little, or not so little, bombs falling from great heights. Those oaks are TALL. Not as tall as the redwoods, though: how amazing those trees are. Also saw elephant seals in a rookery, and sea otters in the wonderful Monterey Aquarium (no humpback whales...I've watched that Star Trek movie too often), and the glorious San Carlos mission in Carmel, where Father Serra himself is buried (shoutout to Franciscans!).

We ate like kings: the first night at Deetjen's Big Sur Inn, a hippie/hobbit delight of a place where I will absolutely stay if ever I go back there, I had pork tenderloin wrapped in smoked bacon with a mushroom/apple/red wine au jus and a parmesan polenta cake on the side, with the best crab cakes EVER for appetizers. Sublime. THe second night we had dinner at this famous place Nepenthe, perched on a crag overlooking the ocean, almost as good: I had duck in an Asian BBQ glaze with basmati rice, my traveling companion had chicken with sage stuffing, and we split homemade Dutch apple pie with vanilla ice cream. And breakfasts at a tiny cafe right next to the motel: pancakes recommended.

The coastline is every bit as gorgeous as it looks on TV: ocean, rocks, trees. But I thought the Ventana Wilderness/Los Padres National Forest, which we had to pass through on the way up that terrifying Highway 1, was even more gorgeous. Huge heaped rocks, mountains shouldering their way down to the water, hairpin turns...fabulous.

Then back to LA, and home on Thursday. Altogether a most excellent adventure.

I Say, It's My Birthday!

To contact us Click HERE
Kind of crept up on me this year...nothing special planned. A quiet day as usual, with filet mignon for dinner and chocolate pound cake w/vanilla ice cream and one candle. And of course a rummage on eBay for a smallish present to myself, nothing extravagant---perhaps a pretty teapot, as I've been getting into cuppa territory recently.

I don't really have anything profound to say on turning 66. It certainly doesn't feel ancient or anything; though a few joints have gotten a little creakier, all else is much the same. The plans for last year (TV series) fell through, sadly and disappointingly, but this year I'm going to try to knock out two books to make up for it. Apart from that, no real resolutions except the usual: go to the gym and work out more, get out more with friends, GET some more local friends, tidy up my bomb site of an apartment...like that.

But those are all good things to plan, and not so extravagant as to be impossible of achievement. On the whole, and with a few exceptions, I'm well pleased with how my life has turned out. And that's nice to be able to say. At least I think it is...

25 Kasım 2012 Pazar

Burqa's Sneerage

To contact us Click HERE
I see where France wants to pass a law banning the burqa, and all the usual suspects are having fits about it. Including me.

Now, it might seem racist or sexist or religionist or whatever to try to legislate against “traditional” ethnic clothing, but don’t let the bleeding-heart libertarians fool you. This is about WAY more than a walking tent. It’s really about whether the West is going to be allowed to stay Western. Because, make no mistake, we’re under siege.

The burqa is merely emblematic of a raft of utterly unacceptable practices used in Islam purely and simply for male thugs to control women. Charming things like genital mutilation, “honor” killings, religiously approved polygamy and other such prehistoric attitudes clutched to male Islamic bosoms as a means to allow them to refuse being assimilated into the Western country under discussion: France, the U.K, the Netherlands, Denmark, the U.S., Scandinavia…

The burqa is NOT traditional except within a very small sphere of fundie reactionaries and in the utter civil-liberties hell that is Saudi Arabia. It’s purely political and totally unreasonable: the Koran does NOT demand it, imams have spoken out against it—gosh, they’ll probably be put under fatwa for it! Since that’s the way Islamics tend to do things—and the West has every right in the world to not put up with it.

I notice that women in Islamic countries are not allowed to do all sorts of things, like drive, and work, and be educated, and divorce their husbands, and, yes, go out in public without wearing a black shroud. So Islamics really have no business whatsoever complaining when they’re forced to abide by OUR rules, in OUR countries. They make the rules where they live, and expect outsiders and immigrants and even tourists to comply; so how dare they bitch and moan when forced to comply with the rules in ours? Turnabout is fair play.

But not, it seems, for them. Doesn’t work that way for them, oh nonononono! They issue death decrees against political cartoonists and try to kill them. They HAVE killed filmmakers who “offend” them. Resident U.K. Islamics are trying to get a separate system of justice set up just for them, superseding the fantastic British common law that has endured since Magna Carta and imposing Shari’a. Not on!

And you know, if this sounds racist, I don’t fucking care. Because it isn’t. It’s fair commentary on horrible and immoral practices. Yet that’s the card they all play, the racism one, whenever anyone dares to utter a syllable of criticism of their precious primitive ways. So, primitive AND thin-skinned… Can’t take it? Too bad! Grow up and join the rest of us.

If Islamics living in France insist on the burqa, then I think the French government should fine those who impose it on women. Severely. Or deny them citizenship. Or deport them. There’s apparently no way to make things better for those women, and the males (they’re not men…) will probably just make it worse for the ones under their domination. Countries suffering under the Islamic onslaught might also do well to reconsider letting any more of them in, too; but that’s a whole other rant, as is the rant against homegrown nonsense along these very lines preached and practiced by rabid young converts who attend terrorist mosques.

If ignorant immigrant Islamics insist on bringing their 1st-century goatherder attitudes with them when they move for economic reasons into 21st-century Western societies, they need to be firmly shown (a) the error of their ways, and (b) the border, on their way back home to the medieval satrapies they fled. They’re only here because they can make more money and live more comfortably than they can at home without ever having to participate in our national lives.

Listen, when you come to the West to live, you live by OUR laws and OUR ways. Not yours. As many immigrants of many cultures do. If you can’t manage that, or don’t want to, stay in the desert, or go back to it.

What REALLY gets up my nose is that Islamics pass off all this as "religion." It's not. It's primitive, sexist, racist cultural practices, and it has GOT to change. Before it destroys everybody. Oh, wait, isn't that what they want, and what their "holy" book tells them they must do?

Well, Christians and Jews got past being told in THEIR book to stone to death people who wear cloth of two different threads or plant two different crops next to each other and to sell their own children into slavery.
I'm sure that a race of people who invented higher mathematics and had public street lighting and public gardens in Spain when the rest of Europe was living in filth and ignorance can certainly manage to take the parts that have real spirit and relevance, and leave behind the rest.

If they want to.

Islam badly needs and requires a Martin Luther, or even a Dr. Martin Luther King...

California Beamin'

To contact us Click HERE


Man, turn around and rhere's another month gone...still, it's been busy around here on so many fronts...

Just got back from a week in LA, staying with friends in Malibu. Business first, then a lovely drive up to Big Sur from Monday to Wednesday. Stayed in an adorable little cabin-style renovated motel called Glen Oaks, deep amongst oaks and redwoods, looks nondescript from outside but the rooms are terrific: stone floors in the bathroom with underfloor heating, gas fireplace in the wall, Asian decor. Clean and elegant. No TV, alas, so I will have to do some catching up online.

I saw deer outside my window when I woke up, and a flock of wild turkeys clomped around on the roof, and I tried to sleep under a barrage of acorns, like little, or not so little, bombs falling from great heights. Those oaks are TALL. Not as tall as the redwoods, though: how amazing those trees are. Also saw elephant seals in a rookery, and sea otters in the wonderful Monterey Aquarium (no humpback whales...I've watched that Star Trek movie too often), and the glorious San Carlos mission in Carmel, where Father Serra himself is buried (shoutout to Franciscans!).

We ate like kings: the first night at Deetjen's Big Sur Inn, a hippie/hobbit delight of a place where I will absolutely stay if ever I go back there, I had pork tenderloin wrapped in smoked bacon with a mushroom/apple/red wine au jus and a parmesan polenta cake on the side, with the best crab cakes EVER for appetizers. Sublime. THe second night we had dinner at this famous place Nepenthe, perched on a crag overlooking the ocean, almost as good: I had duck in an Asian BBQ glaze with basmati rice, my traveling companion had chicken with sage stuffing, and we split homemade Dutch apple pie with vanilla ice cream. And breakfasts at a tiny cafe right next to the motel: pancakes recommended.

The coastline is every bit as gorgeous as it looks on TV: ocean, rocks, trees. But I thought the Ventana Wilderness/Los Padres National Forest, which we had to pass through on the way up that terrifying Highway 1, was even more gorgeous. Huge heaped rocks, mountains shouldering their way down to the water, hairpin turns...fabulous.

Then back to LA, and home on Thursday. Altogether a most excellent adventure.

I Say, It's My Birthday!

To contact us Click HERE
Kind of crept up on me this year...nothing special planned. A quiet day as usual, with filet mignon for dinner and chocolate pound cake w/vanilla ice cream and one candle. And of course a rummage on eBay for a smallish present to myself, nothing extravagant---perhaps a pretty teapot, as I've been getting into cuppa territory recently.

I don't really have anything profound to say on turning 66. It certainly doesn't feel ancient or anything; though a few joints have gotten a little creakier, all else is much the same. The plans for last year (TV series) fell through, sadly and disappointingly, but this year I'm going to try to knock out two books to make up for it. Apart from that, no real resolutions except the usual: go to the gym and work out more, get out more with friends, GET some more local friends, tidy up my bomb site of an apartment...like that.

But those are all good things to plan, and not so extravagant as to be impossible of achievement. On the whole, and with a few exceptions, I'm well pleased with how my life has turned out. And that's nice to be able to say. At least I think it is...

Martin's Fabulous Feast, Baltimore, MD

To contact us Click HERE
Martin’s Fabulous FeastDate:  Saturday, August 4, 2012Time:  1pm thru 5pmPlace:  Baltimore, MarylandPrice:   $106.99 per person

MARTIN’S FABULOUS FEAST
OLD FASHIONED CRAB FEAST #3steamed hard crabs featuring
Our Homemade Crab Soup/Soup du Jour
Shrimp Creole with Rice
Choice Roast Sirloin of BeefFried Fillet of Fish
Fresh Sweet Golden Corn
Pasta Primavera
Shredded Beef B-B-Q
Slices of Fresh Melons


All Feasts Include:OUR GOURMET HOT BUFFET
  • Bar-B-Que Maryland Chicken
  • Martin’s Famous All Beef Jumbo Hot Dogs
  • Creamy Mashed Potatoes with Homemade Gravy
  • Fresh Barrel Cured Sauerkraut
  • Vegetable DuJour
FRESHLY PREPARED COLD BUFFET
~ Chef’s Own Homemade Cold Salads ~
  • Seafood Salad 
  • Creamy Cole Slaw
  • Potato Salad 
  • Homemade Chicken 


A FABULOUS FRESH SALAD BAR
Tossed Greens with a Huge Array of Fixin’s and Condiments
THE “BAKERY” DEPARTMENT
  • Assorted Dinner Rolls 
  • Hot Dog Rolls
  • Variety of Sliced Bread 
FROM THE TAVERN
(dispensed by our Friendly Bartenders)
  • Ice Cold Beer on Tap
  • Salted Pretzels and Crispy Potato Chips
  • Assorted Soda, Set-Ups And Ice
THE DESSERT DEPARTMENT
  • Jello & Fruit Cocktail
  • Assorted Pastries and Sheetcakes
  • Coffee Station with Regular, Decaf & Tea

24 Kasım 2012 Cumartesi

Burqa's Sneerage

To contact us Click HERE
I see where France wants to pass a law banning the burqa, and all the usual suspects are having fits about it. Including me.

Now, it might seem racist or sexist or religionist or whatever to try to legislate against “traditional” ethnic clothing, but don’t let the bleeding-heart libertarians fool you. This is about WAY more than a walking tent. It’s really about whether the West is going to be allowed to stay Western. Because, make no mistake, we’re under siege.

The burqa is merely emblematic of a raft of utterly unacceptable practices used in Islam purely and simply for male thugs to control women. Charming things like genital mutilation, “honor” killings, religiously approved polygamy and other such prehistoric attitudes clutched to male Islamic bosoms as a means to allow them to refuse being assimilated into the Western country under discussion: France, the U.K, the Netherlands, Denmark, the U.S., Scandinavia…

The burqa is NOT traditional except within a very small sphere of fundie reactionaries and in the utter civil-liberties hell that is Saudi Arabia. It’s purely political and totally unreasonable: the Koran does NOT demand it, imams have spoken out against it—gosh, they’ll probably be put under fatwa for it! Since that’s the way Islamics tend to do things—and the West has every right in the world to not put up with it.

I notice that women in Islamic countries are not allowed to do all sorts of things, like drive, and work, and be educated, and divorce their husbands, and, yes, go out in public without wearing a black shroud. So Islamics really have no business whatsoever complaining when they’re forced to abide by OUR rules, in OUR countries. They make the rules where they live, and expect outsiders and immigrants and even tourists to comply; so how dare they bitch and moan when forced to comply with the rules in ours? Turnabout is fair play.

But not, it seems, for them. Doesn’t work that way for them, oh nonononono! They issue death decrees against political cartoonists and try to kill them. They HAVE killed filmmakers who “offend” them. Resident U.K. Islamics are trying to get a separate system of justice set up just for them, superseding the fantastic British common law that has endured since Magna Carta and imposing Shari’a. Not on!

And you know, if this sounds racist, I don’t fucking care. Because it isn’t. It’s fair commentary on horrible and immoral practices. Yet that’s the card they all play, the racism one, whenever anyone dares to utter a syllable of criticism of their precious primitive ways. So, primitive AND thin-skinned… Can’t take it? Too bad! Grow up and join the rest of us.

If Islamics living in France insist on the burqa, then I think the French government should fine those who impose it on women. Severely. Or deny them citizenship. Or deport them. There’s apparently no way to make things better for those women, and the males (they’re not men…) will probably just make it worse for the ones under their domination. Countries suffering under the Islamic onslaught might also do well to reconsider letting any more of them in, too; but that’s a whole other rant, as is the rant against homegrown nonsense along these very lines preached and practiced by rabid young converts who attend terrorist mosques.

If ignorant immigrant Islamics insist on bringing their 1st-century goatherder attitudes with them when they move for economic reasons into 21st-century Western societies, they need to be firmly shown (a) the error of their ways, and (b) the border, on their way back home to the medieval satrapies they fled. They’re only here because they can make more money and live more comfortably than they can at home without ever having to participate in our national lives.

Listen, when you come to the West to live, you live by OUR laws and OUR ways. Not yours. As many immigrants of many cultures do. If you can’t manage that, or don’t want to, stay in the desert, or go back to it.

What REALLY gets up my nose is that Islamics pass off all this as "religion." It's not. It's primitive, sexist, racist cultural practices, and it has GOT to change. Before it destroys everybody. Oh, wait, isn't that what they want, and what their "holy" book tells them they must do?

Well, Christians and Jews got past being told in THEIR book to stone to death people who wear cloth of two different threads or plant two different crops next to each other and to sell their own children into slavery.
I'm sure that a race of people who invented higher mathematics and had public street lighting and public gardens in Spain when the rest of Europe was living in filth and ignorance can certainly manage to take the parts that have real spirit and relevance, and leave behind the rest.

If they want to.

Islam badly needs and requires a Martin Luther, or even a Dr. Martin Luther King...

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Man, turn around and rhere's another month gone...still, it's been busy around here on so many fronts...

Just got back from a week in LA, staying with friends in Malibu. Business first, then a lovely drive up to Big Sur from Monday to Wednesday. Stayed in an adorable little cabin-style renovated motel called Glen Oaks, deep amongst oaks and redwoods, looks nondescript from outside but the rooms are terrific: stone floors in the bathroom with underfloor heating, gas fireplace in the wall, Asian decor. Clean and elegant. No TV, alas, so I will have to do some catching up online.

I saw deer outside my window when I woke up, and a flock of wild turkeys clomped around on the roof, and I tried to sleep under a barrage of acorns, like little, or not so little, bombs falling from great heights. Those oaks are TALL. Not as tall as the redwoods, though: how amazing those trees are. Also saw elephant seals in a rookery, and sea otters in the wonderful Monterey Aquarium (no humpback whales...I've watched that Star Trek movie too often), and the glorious San Carlos mission in Carmel, where Father Serra himself is buried (shoutout to Franciscans!).

We ate like kings: the first night at Deetjen's Big Sur Inn, a hippie/hobbit delight of a place where I will absolutely stay if ever I go back there, I had pork tenderloin wrapped in smoked bacon with a mushroom/apple/red wine au jus and a parmesan polenta cake on the side, with the best crab cakes EVER for appetizers. Sublime. THe second night we had dinner at this famous place Nepenthe, perched on a crag overlooking the ocean, almost as good: I had duck in an Asian BBQ glaze with basmati rice, my traveling companion had chicken with sage stuffing, and we split homemade Dutch apple pie with vanilla ice cream. And breakfasts at a tiny cafe right next to the motel: pancakes recommended.

The coastline is every bit as gorgeous as it looks on TV: ocean, rocks, trees. But I thought the Ventana Wilderness/Los Padres National Forest, which we had to pass through on the way up that terrifying Highway 1, was even more gorgeous. Huge heaped rocks, mountains shouldering their way down to the water, hairpin turns...fabulous.

Then back to LA, and home on Thursday. Altogether a most excellent adventure.