BREAKING NEWS

On Thursday, November 27, at approximately 11:14 AM Eastern Daylight Time… the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately Rickrolled.

never gonna say goodbye at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

“As God As My Witness…”

In the early days of Blonde Champagne, YouTube was but a gleam in some parents’ basements’ eye.  When I wanted to post a bit of WKRP in Cincinnati’s classicer-than-classic “Turkeys Away” episode, I was forced to go to the transcript.

Now?  Imagination is overrated!  Let the flashing, talking images tell you what to think, say, and do!  Happy Thanksgiving, dear The Readers… I am so thankful for you.

publicity stunt at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done?

Today was immersed in cookie dough and soapsuds covering my mother’s good china.  I also moved a glass vase stuffed with Champagne flutes from one side of the kitchen to the other.  Background music:  Janet Jackson, “Nasty Boys.”  Put on your aprons, ladies!

When you’re non-domestic 364 days out of the year, the day before Thanksgiving is a good one to cram it all in.  You can at least pretend.  I very carefully lined up the instant potatoes, boxed stuffing, and canned cranberry sauce on the counter, then checked the cooking time for the pre-bagged, pre-gravied turkey before hurling it back in the freezer.  The salt on the table, however, was prepared from scratch, poured by my own self from the container to the shaker.  I mean, do it right, people.

If you have a moment between bastings, please do head over to Catholic Online, where a piece which got its start on Blonde Champagne is currently running.  And so the Catholic Church begins its slide right out of Western Civilization.

over the river, indeed at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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A Simple Suggestion

Here’s  a little something for those of you who were dissatisfied with the results of November 4.  One fellow Net runner attached this to an email sent to every single person he knows.  He put “My House on Election Night” in the subject line:

Me, I blasted the video to every mother of boys I know with the subject “Be Thankful.”

See, it’s best that those who feel this way get this out of your systems.  Because as I said on the pre-election broadcast of Blonde Champagne Radio, this ain’t about teams; it’s about not slowly ripping out one another’s esophageal tissue over the next four years.

And here’s how to do it:  You divorce the personal from the political.  I say this not only for anti-Obama voters, but for people who hate any politician, and you know who you are (the politicians who make me claw at every single skin atom forehead individually, not you ever-docile The Readers.)

What you do is pretend that this policy proposal, that Cabinet appointment is issuing from some random American who happened to win the jury duty lottery to be President on that particular date, and you assess it from there.  You applaud the stuff you like and give the Philly treatment to the crap you don’t.  Call Obama whatever you wish, a different name every day, to support this illusion:  Bob, Daisy, Mister Shuggles.  Go ahead, make a four-year tear off calendar page if that helps.  There has got to be 1460 different first names out there, with over one thousand different spellings of “Brittney” alone.

Either way, we’re all in this together.  And if all else fails?  Sugar.  Sugar sugar sugar sugar sugar.

just trying to help at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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Recipe Direction of the Week

From “Mocha Truffles”:

“Dip balls, one at a time, into chocolate.”

awesome at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

Be of Good Cheer

The best photograph I have of my great-grandparents features them standing in front of a Christmas tree.  Neither are anywhere close to smiling.

At first I chalked this up to a lifetime diet of sauerkraut.  Now I’ve found another potential Misery Factor:  After my grandfather died, we dug through the basement of the home he and my grandmother occupied for nearly forty years, which, like the basement of many Depression-era citizens, contained enough housecoats, broken lamps, white belts, and to general rust to tide the entire family over through any manner of worldwide emergency.

My favorite items are the documents and books they actually used, one of which is a collection of prayers and recommendations entitled Mother Love, published in 1925.  It’s about seven hundred pages long and includes such admonitions as “Both the son and the daughter should be earnestly warned against picking up indiscriminately every magazine that flaunts gay colors or a catchy title.”

And: “Associations and friendships with non-Catholics should not be fostered lest perhaps the danger of a mixed marriage arise… After the life-partner has been chosen and the engagement has been closed, the parents must not relax their vigilance over the couple.  Liberties and familiarities should not be permitted to them, and they should not be allowed to meet except in the presence of a third person; at least, they should not be permitted to be alone together for any length of time.”

And:  “Has (your child) been guilty of some naughtiness, say, ‘Ah, you are now grieving dear Little Jesus!’ or ‘What would the little Child Jesus think were you to do such a thing!’”

And then, when it’s all over:  “Many a father and many a mother who relied too much upon the fine promises of their children and who expected greater filial devotion and love in exchange for their own generosity, were cruelly neglected and their death was hailed with joy by their precious offspring.”

And:  “A Christian mother should let her children play much in the open air, even when the weather is somewhat cold and unpleasant… Children should always be cheerful not only at their games and recreations but also at their work and even in their little trials and hurts.  As early in life as possible they should be taught that the afflictions and reverses of life, such as excessive cold or heat, slander or gossip, offenses and insults and abuse, sickness and wounds and death, are blessings in disguise and sent by God to wean us from the world and its attractions and arouse in us a greater love and desire for the eternal joys of heaven.”

So:  Smiling through the femur bone sticking up through one’s thigh muscles after playing outside in a sub-zero windstorm, no gay colors (lavender?  dusty pink?), no touching, no non-Catholic friends, and then you die.  And then your children eat cupcakes and caviar right over your open grave.

To avoid such a fate, the mother in Mother Love is instructed to put the children to bed in the following manner, complete with several pages of formal prayers (“Father”, btw, is curiously missing throughout this entire procedure):

“Sprinkle yourself and your children with holy water… Be watchful that your children undress and lie down modestly.  Be a model for them in this respect… When in bed fold your hands and reflect that even so you will one day lie in your coffin.  Say:  ‘I am once to die.  But when, or where, or how, I know not.  This only do I know that, if I die in mortal sin, I shall eternally suffer the frightful pains of hell…’”

And directly on the heels of that:  “Endeavour to fall asleep whilst entertaining some good thought.”  Sleep tight!

To be sure, there’s some excellent advice in Mother Love, which, frankly, might do the world of 2008 a great deal of good, such as the wild suggestion that children should be fed “candies and sweetmeets in moderation” and in general focus on the eternal.  But still:  Wow, you have to watch out for those mixed marriages.

aunt love at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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Personal Library

Today I let one of my students borrow a copy of my book, ostensibly for a class project (specifically, BOOKS WHICH ARE COMPLETELY AWESOME.)  This was not one of my better Professional Professor Person moves, because even though all you have to do is Google me and there shall appear Drink to the Lasses, I was relaxing in the knowledge that these are college freshmen, who, like nearly all great masses of college freshmen, have 1) no money 2) little to no motivation to read things not presented on a two inch by two inch screen.  I worried very little, then, about them finding out about things I didn’t want them to find out about until after the student evaluations were safely stowed.  Like where I hide the murder weapons.

But now:  Seminarian cheating and the utter inability sit down in a chair a man had just vacated, right in their hands.  Great move, sport.  At Friday’s class, I am thinking I’m going to skip the part where I say at ten-minute intervals, “Does anybody have any questions about anything?”

I should read less.

alpiner at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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STS-126 Launch Commentary

Just recorded a companion commentary to the STS-126 launch; the video is here in case you can’t get the insert to play.  I did my best to line it up Rifftrax style and to stay out of the way of the dialogue between Mission Control and the crew, and most likely failed utterly.  Still, you’ll be able to hear me absolutley butcher the name of my own website at the top of the broadcast, which is always fun.

MECO at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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Baby Cousin Baptism Commentary, By: Will The Small Child Nephew

“WATER!”

They’ve Got a Mission UPDATE

Apparently, planes aren’t supposed to crash when it’s rainy or dark, because the Great Field Maneuver Exercise of 2008 has been canceled.

“The weather is yucko,” the commander announced in an email.  And thus are great military victories achieved.

souls of men dreaming of skies to conquer at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com