Saturday after Thanksgiving

I'd forgotten all about Blogspot. Or blogging in general. Kind of interesting to look back and read my take on a given period of time years after the fact.

Flynn is out buying some new clothes. He has a dinner to attend tonight and only now noticed that his old clothes no longer fit. No time to wash any new clothes he finds.

Live and learn.

Flynn worked until about 10:30 on Thanksgiving. We waiting for him. Apparently keeping cut potatoes in warm water for hours is a bad idea, they turned to rubber and refused to soften.
Made more masked potatoes (singular) last night, started them in cool water, they cooked just fine, they mashed perfectly.

Thanksgiving dinner always tastes even better the next night.

Placed some shallot, rosemary and onion in the turkey cavity. Really tasty.
Made a cherry pie which turned out (IMHO) very well. The kids refuse to touch it. I think it's delicious. I even attempted a lattice crust, which looks homespun at best. The filling was hot and turned the dough strips to much as I was trying to weave them over and under. Ah well. Still tastes good.

Ordered more flea meds for the cats. Far behind on that.

Should receive lease money on Tuesday. About 3/4 of the lease money goes to expenses and bills, the rest to food and other expenses.

In September there was an additional $1000 of lease money, send Wells Fargo $2K that month. Only $1K last month. Still waiting to see any money from the two guns I left on consignment. Really want to pay down the Wells Fargo card in particular.

Bought CDW a new pair of shoes last Saturday on the way to Randy's opening once she finally admitted that she needed a new pair. I'd been asking for months.

I need to find the book on Macaw and put together a web page for Renee. Unsure how to use the software, really. Seldom do any web work.


Five years and change since my last Blogger post. Time does fly.

Wine: Yellow Tail Cabernet Sauvignon

Just about undrinkable, actually. An artificial cork, never a good sign. Never a sign of good wine, or even decent table wine, which is what I'm after.

This stuff was unpleasantly tight and overly aggressive. I ended up cutting it (is that a street drug term? oh my.) with some Two-Buck Chuck Cab (my favorite). Otherwise it was headed down the drain, it was that bad. I guess I'd tried Yellow Tail Shiraz in the past and thought it was ok. This was not ok. This proved to be a wine to avoid.

More complicated bad dreams

Five or six in a row, every night, all night. Trying to tell me something. Just money worries? I can't figure it out. The last time I experienced anything like this it was before I married Valeria.

Am I about to make some titanic mistake? If so, what? What is going on? Bizarre to have this many complicated bad dreams.

Wine: Black Swan Cabernet Sauvignon

Very nearly undrinkable. Bouquet like brackish water with a corpse at the bottom. Taste like drinking rancid aftershave. Didn't get better. The kind of wine you initially want to pour down the drain, but stupidly give a second chance to.

I mixed it 50/50 with Charles Shaw Cab and it was drinkable. Overpriced at four bucks. Overpriced at a buck a bottle, it just is not good enough to drink, and I'm far from a snob.

Wine: Charles Shaw Cabernet Sauvignon

This is the Two-Buck Chuck from Trader Joe's you've probably heard about. IT'S DRINKABLE, and not in a my-god-I-cannot-believe-I'm-drinking-this-swill way like a shit wine like "Delicato" might make you feel.

I'm not wild (or even mildly enthusiastic) about the other Charles Shaw wines I've tried, but their Cab isn't bad at all -- and at TWO DOLLARS A BOTTLE I don't feel guilty about drinking it.

This is far from the best Cab I've ever tasted -- then again, it doesn't have that heavy British-beer sensation. It's more along the lines of a wine-like beverage.

I swear by this stuff. Cheap, decent table wine. No complaints. Worth at least six bucks a bottle. I've had far worse for thirty bucks a bottle. Highly recommended.

Wine: Down Under Shiraz

How bad could it be for three bucks? Pretty bad. This is a Shiraz, I usually drink Cabs, so that was a bad start, but what the heck? How bad could it be? My notes on a Post-It say "Small. Tight. Decent flavor. Thin like a ridgetop trail. Sour. Overpriced @ 2.99" And so it was. I'd had worse. But not by much. A wine to avoid. Seriously avoid.

Wine: Mad Housewife Cabernet Sauvignon

This wine has a clever name and that's about all it has going for it... tight, unpleasant, un-fun... really not much to recommend it. Overpriced at five bucks.

China suspects false-flag attack in South Korean ship sinking

Beijing suspects false flag attack on South Korean corvette
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer


May 28, 2010, 00:18

(WMR) -- WMR's intelligence sources in Asia suspect that the March attack on the South Korean Navy anti-submarine warfare (ASW) corvette, the Cheonan, was a false flag attack designed to appear as coming from North Korea.

One of the main purposes for increasing tensions on the Korean peninsula was to apply pressure on Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama to reverse course on moving the U.S. Marine Corps base off Okinawa. Hatoyama has admitted that the tensions over the sinking of the Cheonan played a large part in his decision to allow the U.S. Marines to remain on Okinawa. Hatoyama's decision has resulted in a split in the ruling center-left coalition government, a development welcome in Washington, with Mizuho Fukushima, the Social Democratic Party leader threatening to bolt the coalition over the Okinawa reversal.

The Cheonan was sunk near Baengnyeong Island, a westernmost spot that is far from the South Korean coast, but opposite the North Korean coast. The island is heavily militarized and within artillery fire range of North Korean coastal defenses, which lie across a narrow channel.

The Cheonan, an ASW corvette, was decked out with state-of-the-art sonar, plus it was operating in waters with extensive hydrophone sonar arrays and acoustic underwater sensors. There is no South Korean sonar or audio evidence of a torpedo, submarine or mini-sub in the area. Since there is next to no shipping in the channel, the sea was silent at the time of the sinking.

However, Baengnyeong Island hosts a joint US-South Korea military intelligence base and the US Navy SEALS operate out of the base. In addition, four U.S. Navy ships were in the area, part of the joint U.S-South Korean Exercise Foal Eagle, during the sinking of the Cheonan. An investigation of the suspect torpedo's metallic and chemical fingerprints show it to be of German manufacture. There are suspicions that the US Navy SEALS maintains a sampling of European torpedoes for sake of plausible deniability for false flag attacks. Also, Berlin does not sell torpedoes to North Korea, however, Germany does maintain a close joint submarine and submarine weapons development program with Israel.

The presence of the USNS Salvor, one of the participants in Foal Eagle, so close to Baengnyeong Island during the sinking of the South Korean corvette also raises questions.

The Salvor, a civilian Navy salvage ship, which participated in mine laying activities for the Thai Marines in the Gulf of Thailand in 2006, was present near the time of the blast with a complement of 12 deep sea divers.

Beijing, satisfied with North Korea's Kim Jong Il's claim of innocence after a hurried train trip from Pyongyang to Beijing, suspects the U.S. Navy's role in the Cheonan's sinking, with particular suspicion on the role of the Salvor. The suspicions are as follows:

1. The Salvor engaged in a seabed mine-installation operation, in other words, attaching horizontally fired anti-submarine mines on the sea floor in the channel.

2. The Salvor was doing routine inspection and maintenance on seabed mines, and put them into an electronic active mode (hair trigger release) as part of the inspection program.

3. A SEALS diver attached a magnetic mine to the Cheonan, as part of a covert program aimed at influencing public opinion in South Korea, Japan and China.

The Korean peninsula tensions have conveniently overshadowed all other agenda items on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visits to Beijing and Seoul.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2010 WayneMadenReport.com

Used Camera

I'd dropped my old-by-now Canon S410 camera some time back. I sent it off to be repaired for $100 to Canon. The allegedly repaired camera lasted about a month before it crapped out again. I was unimpressed.

This past week it occured to me to look on eBay for the same camera, and I found one that sounds like it's in decent shape which I bid for and won. I'm excited about its arrival. I haven't had a functioning camera aside from the ultra-crappy camera built into my phone for a long time, now.

I didn't want to spent $150 or so on the Canon "loyalty" program in which they offer you a refurbished camera to replace your broken Canon camera. I can't possibly afford a "real" dSLR, which I think I'd love, but it's just out of the question. I have other things I'd rather spend $2500 on -- which I think is what the damage would be between a decent body, a decent lens and the requisite UV filter. Plus a real camera wouldn't exactly fit in my pocket.

Hopefully when the camera arrives it will function. Stay tuned...

---

The cheap used camera DID NOT WORK. The eBay seller said she'd received it from her mother and didn't think to test it before listing it. I wrote it off to experience and coughed up the $200 for a new small camera from Radio Shack in time for my kid's fifth-grade orchestra concert. The new camera cost about half what the old one did, is about half the weight and the LCD screen is about twice the size... so I'm pretty satisfied with it. I'm not happy about the dumb shit listing a broken camera, however. I sold my old nonfunctional camera and this new, used, nonfunctional camera to someone -- and I listed them as BEING nonfunctional. Didn't make any money but I got those cameras out of my house...

Tuesday 9.33

Got the kids out the door/to school. Did some dishes, doing some laundry. Got the mail, ate some scrambled eggs with hot salsa to which I added three roasted habaneros. Delicious. Love the heat.

My toe, which I somehow injured last Friday, still hurts but it's better than it was. Couldn't sleep Saturday night because it hurt too much. Took a bunch of Advil and have soaked my foot a few times in ice water.

Tomorrow I'm going with Cassidy to her middle school for her orientation. Will need the use of both of my feet to locomote around.

I guess I'll throw the laundry in the dryer and then try and squeeze out a decent drawing.

Six drawings

Working on another drawing. Can't stick with it. Why is it so hard to draw today?

Six drawings done and printed… "official" drawings at long, long last.

Why am I not making better progress on this drawing?

Out of money before the month begins

Money is looking VERY bad. I'll have to partially pay my six months of auto insurance instead of paying it all at once. My credit card bill is huge and I have an unusual expense $$$ for the will and trust revision. Money is looking VERY bad.

Kind of depressing.