And this is the week when all of the office microwaves will smell like turkey.

Because I can cook for three days straight!

Bread -> dressing, pie, brine -> turkey, pork & kraut, fixins, etc.. Love it.

Happy Thursday to all.

Shorter Constitutional scholars:

Because the Dems didn't do today what they could've done today, it means they could've done it three years ago, but they didn't because they wanted fixable problems to go unfixed three years in the future! Their perfidy knows no bounds.

A few weeks ago, Pepper stopped jumping up on the bathroom sinks - despite loving to drink out of the faucets. For a while, she would try to jump up but not quite make it; so she just stopped trying. Now, she just stands in front of them and meows. And then she stopped being able to jump up onto the edge of the tub without taking a few practice tries. We thought she was just fat (which the vet always says she is).

And then she started having trouble getting up the stairs, which is bad because the litter box is upstairs.

So, after scaring ourselves by Goolging "cat can't jump anymore", we took her to the vet.

Turns out she isn't considered fat any more - my food rationing worked! But she does have arthritis in her back knees. She's only 6 1/2.

Poor girl.

That TV cooking show guy, Alton Brown, shot the video for REM's "The One I Love" ?

Now you do.

Chatham county NC, animal control §22-406:

No person who is the owner or custodian of any single family residence shall have greater than eight (8) cats, unless all animals are permanently confined to the actual living space of the family residence.

We can keep as many cats as we can confine!

This Is Comfy

Take that, Kevin Drum and your fascist LA three cat maximum !

On a lighter note...

A few weeks ago, my little Fender Vibro Champ XD stopped working. It just faded out in what should have been the middle of an epic rock noodling session. But, since it was pretty cheap when I got it, and it was probably out of warranty, I thought it would cost more to fix it than to replace it. (plus replacing meant I could go spend money at the guitar store!) So, I replaced it with a Fender Mustang I.

Like the Vibro Champ XD, it's a modelling amp - there's a digital processing section before the amplifier that can simulate a bunch of other amps and tons of effects - including some really fun things like auto-wahs, stepping-modulators, pitch-shifters, harmonizers and more delay/echo/reverbs than I could ever use. Unlike the Champ, the Mustang doesn't have a tube amp output section - it's all solid state. But, the Mustang's amp simulation is good enough that it doesn't seem to matter - and I had to really crank the Champ to get the tubes to show themselves, anyway.

It has 24 preset amp/effect combos. And it also has a USB port so you can plug it into your computer, and using the Fender software, create new combinations of amps and effects or download other people's creations. And you can control the amp's settings from your PC, live, while you play. You can even record audio from the USB port into your PC, live.

It has a headphone jack, built-in tuner, and an aux-in port, so you can plug your iPod into it. Being solid state, it weighs almost nothing.

It's really an amazing little thing - especially for just over $100.

And, one of the coolest features is the volume knob's calibration. Unlike any of the other dozen amps I've owned, this volume knob seems designed for home use - the useable low-volume range starts at '1' and goes up until '3' or so. All the other amps have had a low volume range that started at '1' and went to 1.2 or maybe 1.3, with a sharp jump up to HEY, COULD YOU TURN THAT DOWN!? at 1.4.

As an experiment, I bought some new tubes for the Champ, plugged them in and... it works again. So now I have two little Fender modelling amps. I should probably sell the Champ...

When to comes to linguistics, I'm a die-hard descriptivist: a language is what it is, not what people on self-constructed pedestals say it must be. Languages change, they evolve, they don't give a fuck about the prescriptions of self-appointed grammar police. So, I generally laugh at people who say "No, this word must not be used that way! You're ruining things!"

But, I hate this. "Because" as a preposition ("I use 'because' as a preposition, because hipster.") conveys, not so much information, but attitude. It drips with self-conscious irony. When I read it, I know it's supposed to convey a smug eye-roll and faux-weary shrug. All I can see is the writer is mugging for the reader; it distracts from whatever is being said. I want this to go away.

Somehow, it's different from all the other internetisms and literary mugging that I'm perfectly comfortable with. I don't know why.

Perhaps I need a vacation?

/grumpyOldFart

iPhone

Monday AM at the lake.

While many Americans have been led to believe the war in Afghanistan will soon be over, a draft of a key US-Afghan security deal obtained by NBC News shows the United States is prepared to maintain military outposts in Afghanistan for many years to come, and pay to support hundreds of thousands of Afghan security forces.

The wide-ranging document, still unsigned by the United States and Afghanistan, has the potential to commit thousands of American troops to Afghanistan and spend billions of US taxpayer dollars.

Maybe someone should ask the people if that's what they want.