Anne Lake on the Silver Divide, John Muir Wilderness.
Archive for Miscellany and Whatever
Sunday Sierrablogging
Fun With Vodka: Pink Peppercorn-Lemon Vodka
A few years ago I discovered, to my horror, that my favorite pepper vodka (Pertsovka, made by Stolichnaya) was no longer available. I decided to take matters into my own hands and try making my own infusions. I experimented with various flavors of peppercorns and chiles, and got some really nice stuff.
Then I found a nice honey-pepper vodka (Nemiroff, from the Ukraine) at the Russian deli I frequent. Being naturally lazy, I let my infusion experiments slide and drank Nemiroff instead.
Recently, I started playing around with it again, and made a lovely pink peppercorn-lemon vodka. It’s extremely easy: in about a fifth of vodka, use 20-30 pink peppercorns and maybe 1/2 tsp of lemon zest (more if you want a more lemony vodka…but you knew that, didn’t you?). Let it steep for a couple of weeks, strain out the peppercorns and lemon zest, and there it is.
This makes a really nice V&V1; just use more vermouth than you would with non-flavored vodka, and garnish with a twist.
It’s also really good with lemonade–which obviously has to be made from fresh lemon juice. My recipe, adapted from the old Joy of Cooking:
1 quart water
3/4 cup sugar
3 oz. lemon juice
1/2 tsp. lemon zest
1/2 tsp. salt
Heat water, sugar, and lemon zest until sugar is dissolved. Add lemon juice. Strain and cool.
Enjoy!
1Vermouth & vodka
The Katherine Harris Show
The worst thing about all the incredibly crappy ‘reality’ series out there is it didn’t occur to anybody to make the one ‘reality’ series that would be worth watching.
I’m talking, of course, about a series following the Katherine Harris campaign.
It’s the gift that keeps on giving, the train wreck that keeps on wrecking, the catastrophic failure that just goes right on failing. It’s the entertainment event of the century. Because, let’s face it: loathsome + clueless + disaster-prone = Comedy Gold.
All is not lost. Maybe when it’s all over (which could be sooner than November), HBO could turn it into docufarce, in the vein of The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom. (In fact, I’ll bet Holly Hunter could do an hilarious Katherine Harris.) But hell, I would even settle for a sitcom. Imagine the possibilities… » Read more..
Friday Random Ten
DiVinyls – Back to the Wall
Social Distortion – Ring of Fire
Go-Go’s – Daisy Chain
Wire – I Feel Mysterious Today
Ennio Morricone – The Ecstasy of Gold
Wire – Two People in a Room
Hüsker Dü – She Floated Away
The Clash – I’m So Bored with the USA
Siouxsie & the Banshees – Christine
DJ Shadow – Organ Donor
Bonus track:
Lene Lovich – Home
So…what are y’all listening to?
You’re Gonna Take a Walk in the Rain, and You’re Gonna Get Wet…I Predict
As your substitute Deborah for the week, I feel duty bound to mention that over at Pandagon Pam Spaulding posts about a crazy fundamentalist attacking Wicca. Sigh. Sort of a dog-bites-man story, really, and nothing terribly new in it…except that she also mentions the guy’s co-author, Dave Hunt, who has written about the evil of using psychic powers:
While acknowledging that many psychics are fake and use tricks to deceive clients, Hunt believes some psychics are used by demons to make destructive predictions. He believes assassin Sirhan Sirhan, for example, had demonic psychic powers and predicted the day that Robert F. Kennedy died. [emphasis added]
Umm…right.
Somebody should tell this guy that George Bush used his demonic psychic powers to predict the date of the Iraq invasion.
Prosecutors vs. the ‘Gay Panic’ Defense
Via yesterday’s Chronicle, today prosecutors and law enforcement officials are meeting in San Francisco to discuss how to combat the ‘gay panic’ defense. In recent years a fair number of brutal killers have used this defense to get reduced sentences or (in at least one case) get off altogether. It’s a close cousin to the ‘she was asking for it’ rape defense, a way to minimize the brutality of the crime by shifting blame onto the victim.
The most high-profile case in recent Bay Area history is that of Gwen Araujo, a trasgendered teen who was murdered by three boys two of whom had had sex with her before discovering her gender identity. Fortunately, the jury didn’t buy it that time.
It’s encouraging to see law enforcement getting behind this effort (the conference is organized by our own DA, Kamala Harris, and co-sponsored by the workerscompcalaw.com law group and national district attorneys’ associations). It wasn’t that long ago, historically, that law enforcement was more committed to prosecuting people for being gay than to prosecuting crimes against gay people.
One of the guest speakers is a living example of this shift:
Former Laramie, Wyo., police Chief Dave O’Malley, who investigated the killing of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard in 1998, will discuss his own experience of what he calls “losing his ignorance.” Both defendants in that case received two consecutive life terms. Their attorneys included the gay panic argument in opening statements but the judge barred it during trial.
O’Malley describes himself as homophobic before that case, never hesitating to tell an anti-gay joke or story.
“Getting involved in the investigation and interacting with Matt’s friends and family got me thinking for myself and figuring out that I was wrong,” he said.
We still have a long way to go–the fact that the ‘gay panic’ defense exists at all, and is effective, illustrates that–but it never hurts to acknowledge how far we have come.
[Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo]
The President Makes the Decision
So everybody already knows that Bush personally blocked a Justice Department investigation of the illegal electronic surveillance program. I think we can all say ‘obstruction of justice’, but I’m pretty sure Congress (this Congress, with this president) can’t.
I was struck by this key exchange, reported in the Washington Post:
“It was highly classified, very important and many other lawyers had access. Why not OPR?” Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the committee chairman, asked Gonzales.
“The president of the United States makes the decision,” Gonzales replied. [emphasis added]
d’Fuh?
I’m pretty sure Specter wasn’t asking who Bush is (we already know he’s the Decider); Specter was asking why the Decider Decided the Way he Decided. Gonzales’ response will go down in history as one of the all-time classic non-responsive answers.
Just for perspective, let’s try this out in some everyday-type situations:
Officer: Why didn’t you stop at that stop sign?
Driver: The driver makes the decision.
Mom: Why didn’t you do your homework?
Kid: The kid makes the decision.
Really, that’s the level we’ve sunk to with this administration.
The scariest part is that Gonzales (and Bush and the whole lot of them) probably think this is an answer–that the provenance of the decision makes it unquestionable. It’s the executive infallibility doctrine in action; under the influence of people like Addington and Cheney, they’re so ideologically committed to executive supremacy that it doesn’t even occur to them that simply asserting it might not be sufficient.
And the sad thing is, they’re probably right; despite some sharp questioning by Specter and Dianne Feinstein nothing more is going to come of this latest outrage than came of the hundreds before it.
[Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo]
Just Another Pretty Picture
Hell, there has to be some advantage to still being at work at 8:30 pm, right?
‘Conscience’ and the Washington Post, Part II
Yesterday I slammed the Washington Post for an article about ‘conscience’ and healthcare professionals that failed to include a single quote from anyone who had been denied service. I take that back, partly; Jesurglisac points me to a companion story that is entirely from the point of view of the victims of ‘conscience’.
The article has some genuinely heartbreaking stories; I thought this one was the worst:
But some patients agreed to be interviewed, including Deb, who was turned away by pharmacist Gene Herr at a drugstore in Denton, Tex., in 2004, when she tried to get the morning-after pill after being raped on a date. She discussed her experience with a reporter for the first time on the condition that her last name not be used.
“It almost felt like I was being raped again,” said Deb, who had already tried two other pharmacies. “I couldn’t believe someone could do something violent and then I couldn’t have a choice about what to do about it. The horror of what I went through was almost as bad as the first assault. It was like twisting a knife in a wound.” » Read more..
‘Conscience’ and the Washington Post
Via Mahablog comes the story of an anti-choice EMT fired because she refused to transport a patient who was supposed to get an abortion.
Naturally, she’s suing. First reaction: WATB doesn’t even begin to describe this pathetic excuse for humanity.
But as Barbara points out, her story doesn’t add up:
…who calls an ambulance just for an elective abortion? There’s got to be more to this story that Adamson isn’t admitting. Such as, what sort of medical emergency required the patient to go to a hospital by ambulance to terminate her pregnancy? » Read more..
