I’ve about had it up to my eyebrows with all of this “social networking” crap on the web. Oh, sure, I thought they seemed fun at first and I hurriedly signed up for Twitter and a few other places. What a great way to stay in touch with my blogging friends, I thought, even on days when I don’t have time to visit their blogs.

Then a few sites turned into a handful, and a handful became two handfuls, and now every morning when I check email I’m swamped with notices from Friendfeed and messages about who’s added me as a friend, fan or favorite on this or that site. Naturally, I feel obligated — for some strange reason — to check out who those people are and what their blogs are like.

But by the time I’ve done that my morning’s shot, and most of it’s been wasted on strangers who — despite having labeled me as a ‘friend’ or whatever — I don’t know, don’t really have much in common with and, when it comes right down to it, don’t actually want to get to know better. (But, hey, if you added me “Thanks.”)

Now even Google is getting in on the social networking thing with its “Friend Connect” service which — if you ask me — sounds remarkably like running a blog:

Using Google’s new Friend Connect product, any Web page, whether it is devoted to curling or pizza or a folk singer, can allow visitors to make and connect with other “friends” who visit that site. Like any major social network today, any Web page using Friend Connect could easily present to each user the names and pictures of friends and potential friends. Those people could then post messages to one another.

Thing is, I used to love being online in order to avoid being social. I loved sitting down in the morning with a cup of coffee and reading the news, blogging about whatever struck my fancy and exchanging emails with a couple of people before ignoring the computer until the next time I was bored.

Social networking changes all that. If you add someone as a “friend” you’re going to get messages (or Twitters or Friendfeeds or whatever) about every single entry they’ve written, sites they’ve Stumbled or Dugg or added to Del.icio.us and comments they’ve left around the web. And — if they actually know you’re following them — they now expect you to know everything they’ve written within hours of it happening.

The thing about this “social networking”, really, is that it actually seems to be having the exact opposite effect. Why bother sending an email to a close friend saying you’re having a crappy day when, instead, you can just blog about it and assume they’ve read it (then resent them if they haven’t)? Why pick up a phone and ask for a shoulder to cry on when your cat gets run over when, instead, you can Twitter about it and be offended when others don’t know about your loss? When did “socializing” equal monologues which others absolutely must pay attention to or they’re not really your friends?

They can call it “social networking” all they want but as far as I’m concerned it’s all becoming increasingly anti- social. Or at least it’s making me feel that way. So if you happen to be among the four dozen or so people today whom I stopped following, don’t take it too personally. If we were really friends you’d have my email address and/or my phone number, and you’d know you’re welcome to use them when the mood strikes.

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Even though I didn’t understand the song (because my French is that rusty) I still love to listen to this guy’s voice.

Imagine my surprise when, after the third or fourth hearing, I realized that’s the guy who sings the free credit report jingles. Only this is actually his voice, instead of some dub-over.

Where the hell did the past seven days go? Seriously, is “time flying” a sign that I’m having fun (and, if so, why don’t I remember it?) or is it a sign that I’m getting old? No, wait. Don’t tell me. I’m not sure that I want to know.

So here it is, Tippling Tuesday again — the day on which we Venomites celebrate the most vastly under-rated day of the week. Someone recently emailed me the question “Why Tuesday? Why not Monday, Wednesday or Thursday?” to which I can only respond: because it’s there.

Think about it: everyone already hates Mondays, Wednesdays are “Ladies Nights” at many clubs (although I’ve been told that has nothing to do with the reason it’s referred to as “Hump Day”) and hursdays are the night on which smart people rest up for the weekend (and let their livers do the same).

So why not Tuesday?

Tonight I am sitting here contemplating the perfection that is known as the Bleu cheese-stuffed olive. (Okay, mine’s stuffed with Stilton, but that just makes it extra yummy.) But I have to confess: I haven’t tried stuffing my olives with too many things. I once bought some garlic-stuffed green olives at the grocery store but didn’t like the crunch involved. And, of course, I’ve had the ubiquitous pimento stuffed green olives that taste much the way gasoline smells.

What other yumminess have you stuffed your olives with? Or do you just consider them — as I used to — your daily fruit serving that offsets the amount of alcohol you’re about to consume?

It’s been a beautiful Spring day, even if I have spent the majority of it outside picking up fallen branches knocked down by last Thursday night’s storms. After four hours of that, well, I’m too pooped to blog.

So why not play Word Fugue®, that addictive word association game I love to start whenever I’ve got nothing better to write. (Besides, it’s been almost two months since our last round and some of you have been nagging me via email to hurry up and start another game.)

If you’ve never played Word Fugue® before, here are the rules:

1. I start it off with a word.

2. You look at the most recently posted comment.

3. You leave ONE word that comes to mind upon reading the most recent comment.

4. You may play as many times as you like, but you may not use the same word twice.

5. The game continues until comments are closed.

Ready?

Here’s the word:

Tornado

Just one month after I pointed out moves which seem to signal the U.S. is gearing up against Iran, we’ve now sent a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf.

“This deployment has been planned for a long time,” (U.S. Defense Secretary Robert) Gates said. “I don’t think we’ll have two carriers there for a protracted period of time. So I don’t see it as an escalation. I think it could be seen, though, as a reminder.”

Funny, I doubt Tehran will view it that way.

Reuse, repurpose, recycle: it’s a mantra we’re all hearing these days, whether we want to or not. And, while there are some who claim that all the hype over going green is just that — “hype” — most of us realize that it makes financial sense to reuse what you can, rather than shelling out for more stuff.

But when it comes to those Priority Mail boxes from the U.S. Post Office, that’s a big no-no. Not even if you strip off the labels. Not even if you turn the thing inside out and re-tape it before mailing, so that only the brown cardboard side shows. Such recycling might get you slapped with charges of “misusing postal service property” (even though you pay postage to mail it), as one Colorado man has recently learned.

“Our Priority Mail and Express Mail boxes are, bottom line, supposed to be used for that service,” said Nicole Reiter with the Postal Service. “That is what they are intended to be used for.”

The Postal Service said it promotes recycling, as long as customers pay accordingly, even if the box is turned inside out.

“It is important that the customer uses it for the proper service,” said Reiter. Reiter said customers sometimes order their priority and express mail boxes online and then try to use them standard mail. She said that makes it difficult for the USPS to determine which boxes are new or reused.

According to a Post Office spokesperson, the ban against recycling helps keep postal rates “low” for everyone.

Ever wonder what kind of mentoring advice such diverse personalities as Alan Greenspan and Charles Manson would give a 10-year-old kid who’s thinking about dropping out of school? So did “pop-culture historian” Bill Geerhart, who posed as “Billy” and wrote them both, along with several other notable names.

From serial killer Richard Ramirez, known as The Night Stalker came an odd request for a photo:

Billy,
Greetings. Got your letter. What school do you go to? Who’s your friend? You should stay in school. Send pictures.
Richard

(Ramirez later requested photos of Asian girls… but without “scenery”.)

The Unabomber, Ted Kacynzski, sounded surprisingly sane as he noted “I can’t advise you whether to drop out of school, because I don’t know anything about you…whatever you decide to do, I wish you the best of luck.”

Erik Menendez, who is serving a life sentence for the murder of his parents, apparently has a rather busy schedule in California’s Pleasant Valley Prison but that doesn’t stop him from trying to help a kid.

Dear Billy,
I apologize for the length of time it has taken me to respond. That will not happen again. […] It is hard for me to imagine that you should drop out of school. Fill me in some more on the details of your life.

I am here and would like to listen to you and do what I can to help you Billy. But I really need to know more about you. No need to send stamps or that sort of thing. Thank you though Billy.
Your Friend,
Erik

When “Billy” wrote to Alan Greenspan in search of advice about the fastest way to save up money for a speedboat, the then-Federal Reserve Chairman was apparently too busy to write back himself. His assistant (who kindly enclosed a photo of the unphotogenic Greenspan) explained in a neatly-typed letter that it’s never too soon to begin saving since “the longer you have to invest your savings the higher the return will be.”

And notorious, freakazoid serial killer Charles Manson’s advice? It’s as freaky as you’d expect.

Find out why the L.A. Times hasn’t sent my newspaper —Charles Manson.
P.S. O-yes HI BILLY
Easy easy EASSY

(Manson also attached the mysterious picture of a barn.)

I bet you don’t remember this —you dont [sic] even know where its [sic] at. HAHA. I got you there.
Charles Manson
Easy BILLY

But things get really interesting when Geerhart writes back 9 years later and tells Charles Manson he not only stayed in school but wants to become a prosecutor. Read it at Radar Magazine and be glad they haven’t let that sick bastard out.

Tragedy has struck. That’s right tragedy: we’re out of booze.

No, I mean it. There’s none. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Not a drop to drink.

Now, ordinarily this would call for an immediate dash to the drive-through liquor store but after ranting about people who don’t plan ahead and therefore use extra gas, I decided we ought to tough this one out. (Not that I think the clerk at the liquor store actually reads blogs… much less reads period). I just don’t want to feel like a hypocrite.

So tonight I’m sticking with TaB soda in a beer mug.

What’s in your glass?

Earlier this week I had to fill up my gas tank. The grand total came to $50, after which I did the now-obligatory muttering. That didn’t last long, though: it is, after all, the only time during the month of April that I’ve bought gas. That’s right: I use less than one tank per month. VH had to fill up, too. His gas tank holds less than mine so his total came to $36. That’s the second time he’s had to fill up in April, but he felt obligated to grumble, too.

Because, you see, that’s the ‘mericun thing to do these days: bitch about gas prices, even when you know you don’t necessarily have a right to bitch.

Granted, we live in a small town where most of the places we need to go — grocery store, doctor’s office, hair salon, various establishments catering to grown-ups for me; work and the golf course for VH — are within 5 miles of my home.

What really galls me, though, are the people who live in this small town along with me who still wind up spending hundreds of dollars on gas every month. And why? Because they drive into the big city (which, for us, is Kansas City) so they can go to the latest, trendiest restaurants or attend entertainment events.

In my book if you’re spending big money on gas because you’re driving places for the fun of it then you’ve got no right to bitch.

One of my neighbors pulled in to their driveway while I was in the garage vacuuming my van this evening. They’d just returned from a quick dash from home to McDonald’s and walked over to talk about an upcoming homeowners’ association meeting. As we stood there talking, my neighbor remarked that earlier in the day he’d gone to fill up his gas tank. He spent $58 (he drives an SUV) for the second time this week.

The kicker: he works in the same building that VH does… which is only 5 miles away!

I asked why he didn’t pick up McDonald’s while he was out earlier… why make two separate trips. His answer: “Well, we didn’t decide until dinner time that we felt like McDonald’s.”

This, my fellow ‘mericuns, is precisely why OPEC has us all by the nuts. We have a culture in which our fun happens at the spur of the moment. Our convenience, our leisure and recreation, and our seemingly endless need for fun is at the very heart of our problem. We want it all, and we want it now, but we also think we are entitled to have it all cheap.

We sit around our houses and decide we don’t feel like cooking, so why not hop in our cars and drive to McD’s? (It’s no coincidence that McDonald’s is the icon of our American way of life.)

We choose to live in suburbs away from inner city crime, bad schools and urban blight rather than placing ourselves (and our money) in the heart of things were we actually stand a chance of fixing them, if only by our presence and the efforts we put in to our own property. As a result we live far away from where we work yet bitch about long commutes. Then we find it too inconvenient to stop at the grocery store on the way home from work (because, after all, it’s a long commute already) so we demand 24-hour grocery stores that allow us to shop when we feel like it.

We feel like going to the movies, going shopping, going out for a drink and… we go. We don’t walk there — mostly because we felt at some point like building a progressive town or city meant establishing “entertainment districts” far away from residential areas — so we drive.

Feel like Chinese food or pizza for dinner rather than, say, spending a half-hour cooking from whatever’s on hand? Why, order it in! Never mind that your whim means someone else has to do the driving. By God, you’ll get out of cooking, won’t you?

Feel like a movie tonight because there’s nothing good on TV? Go rent one! Why should you have to pass one evening reading a book, right?

Feel like you need to exercise more? Drive to the gym. God forbid you, well, walk out of your front door and keep going for an hour or so.

We feel like doing all sorts of things… and that is our problem. We’re also feel like we should be able to do what we want, when we want it, assuming we can afford it (or can charge it to our credit cards).

And therein lies our problem: our sense of entitlement. Oh, I’m not talking about the “entitlements” like welfare, free medical coverage and all that other quasi-socialist crap. I’m talking about the sense of entitlement that even right-leaning, conservative-thinking folk have: “This is America, for God’s sake, the land of the free.”

Which means, ultimately, that we feel we ought to — as one airline puts it — feel free to roam about the country. Whenever we want. Wherever we want.

But we don’t want to pay for that freedom.

I’ll posit this to you Venomites who love to slam the liberal left for the way they feel like they’re entitled to live off the fat of our taxes: we’re no different. We’re no better. We simply have different priorities: rather than living off the money of our fellow ‘mericans’ tax dollars, we believe we’re entitled to live off the lower profits of foreign oil companies.

Since when was it American and conservative to demand ANY corporation reduce its profits, eh?

Want to save money at the gas pump? Learn to do less of what you feel like doing and more of what you know you should. Even if it’s inconvenient. Even if it sucks.

• Walk.
• Schedule. For those places you can’t get by walking, go there when you’re already out and about.
• Just say no. Once you’re home for the evening, stay home for the evening. Don’t run to McDonald’s because you feel like it.
• Plan ahead. If you need groceries, ake your grocery list with you to the office and make time on the way home from work.
• Postpone liberally. If you forgot to run an errand don’t rush out and do it. Add in extra time the next day to do it on your way to- or from the office.
• Slow the hell down. Sure, the speed limit sign just 20 yards past the green light says you can drive 70. Since when did free-thinking individuals pay attention to signs? Stop trying to max it out and your gas will last a lot longer. And in case you’re one of those afraid to piss (stupid) people off, get in the right lane and drive 55.
• Put out for upkeep. With gas prices what they are it’s tempting to cheap out on other automotive maintenance like getting your oil and air-filters changed and having someone inflate your tires while calibrating the psi. Stop it already. Keeping your auto in tip-top shape — particularly your tire pressure — will help save on gas. So knock it off with the “guesstimating”.
• Be an early bird at the pump. We all hate mornings. We’re all in a hurry to get to work. But filling your tank after the day is warm means you’re buying fumes that will eventually condense and settle into less liquid than what you actually paid for at the pump. Fill up first thing in the morning even if you don’t feel like it.
• Schedule your refills. Gas costs more on the weekends, especially right before a long weekend. The cheapest days to fill up are Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Stop trying to fight it.
• Sell short if you must. Sure, you might be “upside down” in your gas-guzzling SUV, but depending on how much you owe and how much you drive it might be worth it to get out of that gas-guzzler and into a more fuel-efficient vehicle… even if it means looking like a nerd. After all, who’s going to look stupid in about three years: the nerds who drive fuel-efficient vehicles, or the people who can’t pay their mortgage because they spend so much money on gas just getting to and from work?
• Shop online and combine. No, I mean it! I bought an Amazon Prime membership for $79 a couple of years ago. With that, I get free shipping to any address in the U.S., which means I don’t have to run around all over the place shopping for gifts. With their grocery service I can often order in bulk at prices cheaper than my PX, Sam’s Club or Wal-Mart. And, thanks to their subscription service, I can have many regularly-used products sent on a periodic basis which means, for instance, that right about the time I’m running out of tampons there’s a new box arriving via UPS. Now, there’s some argument to be made that it’s not saving gas if UPS delivers. My response: (1) it’s not my gas that’s being used; and (2) the more people in your neighborhood you turn on to this, the more environmentally-friendly it becomes.
• Look for other online alternatives. “Feel” like a movie? Rent via Netflix.com. Hell, if you’ve got a good enough computer you can even watch movies when you feel like it via their immediate downloads that are free for subscribers.
• Garden. Yes, I know this one’s bordering on tree-hugging, but there’s a lot of fun to be had in gardening. When you grow your own veggies you don’t have to think about driving to McD’s or worry about what’s for dinner: just step out back and pick something. You’d be amazed at what you can grow in a 3×6 bed or even in patio containers. I didn’t shell out one red penny for vegetables last summer. Heck, you can even grow vegetables from your apartment balcony without sacrificing floor space. And after a day spent gardening you’ll be too tired to want to go anywhere, anyway.
• Carpool. Now, as someone who hates my fellow humans by default, this is a hard one for me. I don’t like mornings. I don’t like people who expect me to talk to them in the mornings unless I gave birth to them (and even then, they’re trained not to expect a whole lot out of me besides breakfast.) But, hey, if you can’t/won’t homeschool like we do then suck it up and make carpool friends, people.
• Have more sex. Let’s face it: the majority of times we drive somewhere other than work or the grocery store can be attributed to sheer boredom. Bars? They’re the best solution to having nothing to talk about with your spouse. Shopping? There’s a reason why married women do that for “recreation”. And don’t get me started on the subject of why men go to strip bars or Hooter’s (where they just see stuff like this. It’s boredom, baby. And it’s nothing personal. But, hey, if you learn to last (or endure) more than 3 minutes chances are that urge to drive somewhere else (besides towards the headboard) will pass.

Sure, these things all seem counter-intuitive to our “follow your freaking rainbow” culture, but that exact way of thinking is what got us in this predicament in the first place. The very best way to keep OPEC from strangling you by reaching through your anus is to pull your head out of it so you can see what they’re up to, and how you can avoid it.

No, it might not be the “free to be you and me” way of thinking to which we’ve all become entitled… but since when did being conservative mean thinking such socialist thoughts? After all, aren’t we the political party who knows that demand drives supply? Stop demanding so freaking much and watch those prices plummet.

Do your part: inconvenience yourself and piss off the towel heads.

And realize that, until you’re willing to do so, you might as well grab some petroleum-based jelly and lube up while bending over an oil barrel, folks.

In an effort to rapidly boost our flagging economy, the federal government will be sending out the first stimulus checks four days early. So, for those of you who kited your tax payments, this is probably good news.

For some, well, it’s still a waiting game for those who view such things as “rebates” rather than ploys. If you’re in that group, well, you’re probably praying your check will be here in time to take advantage of the discounts retailers are offering.

And you are the precise reason why the government thinks this is such a good idea.

For others — and this includes the Venomous Household — it feels like a shady back-room deal. We wrote a hefty check to the IRS and now they’re writing one to us a bit later. Oddly enough, the amounts aren’t that different.

That makes our decision about how to spend our stimulus check pretty simple: it’s already spent. We paid it once toward a debt with the IRS and when we get that money back, well, we’ll pay it toward another debt… most likely our highest-interest credit card.

Yes, we’re aware that’s not what the idea was behind the whole thing. But then again, we don’t actually understand the fine economic distinction between receiving money from the IRS after having paid them nearly the same amount and, say, “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.

Sure, we’d like to spend that money on a nice big HDTV or a family vacation or even a new tile floor for our kitchen. But, really, isn’t that kind of “screw the budget, I want stuff!” thinking what led to the supposed “mortgage crisis” in the first place?

How about you? What will you be spending your money they shouldn’t have made you pay “stimulus check” on?

You know him. You laugh at him. Now you can own a signed photo of him bare of his Bisht.

That’s right, Islamic Rage Boy is posing in the altogether, but it’s all for a good cause.

For the record, I hate captchas. No doubt this has something to do with being a cranky, impatient bitch.

And, for the record, the captcha that eBay gave me today pretty much seems to confirm this:

Now the real question is: should I be offended?

Congratulations to my friend Kim who’s celebrating being two years smoke-free today.

Having quit repeatedly only to fail and try again, I have to say how impressed I am. Kicking the smoking habit is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do.

In other news, my in-laws are here which is why I’m out on the patio having a cigarette right now. Hey, I’ve got to have something to do with my hands that won’t cause offense or injury.

My mother, having listened to more than her fair share of my complaints about the inability of VH and the Big-Eyed Boy to keep their pee where their pee belongs, sent me an email today about the Amsterdam airport’s unique solution to that very problem.

Supposedly, they’ve etched a fly into every urinal knowing that men are likely to aim at the thing, and thus prevent pissing off employees who are tired of cleaning the walls, floors and just about every other surface in the bathroom.

Naturally, I was skeptical but it turns out this story is anything but new. Apparently it’s been floating around (pardon the pun) for over a decade now.

“So what do you think most men do? That’s right, they aim at the fly when they urinate. They don’t even think about it, and they don’t need to read a user’s manual; it’s just an instinctive reaction. The interesting feature of these urinals is that they’re deliberately designed to take advantage of this inherent human male tendency.”

According to one website, research has shown 80% less splattering with fly-etched urinals than without… which seems to imply that boredom might itself be the primary cause of men pissing all over the dang place… something I just don’t get.

Then again, I can’t say I’ve ever been bored while standing around with a penis in my hand, so perhaps it’s not my place to question this phenomenon.

Thanks to Anwyn for sending the link to this photo which just begs for a caption, doesn’t it?

Leave yours below in the comment section, and feel free to enter as often as you like. (But do strive to be clever, funny and original, won’t you?)

My favorite three captions will be announced… whenever I damn well feel like it.

Until recently, I’d completely stopped listening to television news. I get my news via RSS feeds and the occasional visit to Google News, the beauty of which means that I’ve only had to endure the news that interests me. Has Hillary said something stupid lately? I couldn’t tell you — I don’t pay attention to her if I can help it. Did Obama do something idiotic? I’d never know it — I don’t read much about him these days. For all I know, Libya could become part of Russia and I’d be the last one to find out… if I cared.

Then I bought my new treadmill with the thought of using it while getting a better butt blogging — something I’m determined to do by high summer — and suddenly I’m finding myself listening to television news nearly non-stop.

I remember now why I stopped.

When the media isn’t talking about the number of defaulted home loans they’re talking about the number of number of defaulted credit cards. The housing market is going to hell in a hand-basket. I got that. Didn’t you, oh, about five months ago?

Thing is, until recently I’d thought the problems were limited to the U.S. After all, isn’t that what the media’s preaching: that foreclosures and the “mortgage crisis” are all the result of bad federal regulation? After all, even John McCain is saying calling for legislation designed to help homeowners struggling to make payments to their home loan lenders. Isn’t that proof there’s a problem in our country?

Not so fast.

The housing market is cooling in Canada. Ditto with Scotland and England, too. Heck, even China’s housing market is struggling. I don’t know about you, but to me that’s seeming more of a pandemic — rather than a domestic — issue.

Granted, I’m not an economist. I get bored with numbers (heck, I just got bored typing the word “numbers”), so I can’t profess to understand the intricacies of worldwide financial dependencies. But I do know this: about four years ago VH and I were able to obtain a 4.3% home loan on the nicest house we could afford following the old rule that mortgage payments or rent should be equal to one-fourth of your monthly income. Then we made a 25% down-payment using the funds from the sale of our previous home.

We locked our new mortgage in with fixed payments on a 15-year note and rearranged the rest of our budget accordingly: the mortgage gets paid first, and everything else (aside from my internet connection and hosting fees) goes into the “hope we have enough” pile. Every single month we pay at least $200 extra toward our principle, because we figured that once our home is paid off we’ll have that much more to pay other bills, none of which will pull the roof from over our head simply because we didn’t pay more than the minimum monthly payment.

As a result, we’ve now paid off half of our initial mortgage. That equity, we’ve always figured, is our rainy-day savings: it’s something we can draw on — even if we don’t want to — should life run amok and we really need extra cash.

So, ultimately, I guess I’m saying that I’m having a hard time understanding thinking of the foreclosure crisis as a crisis in the system, as a paradigm for voting, or as something that requires yet more federal involvement. If it’s not limited to our country, and it’s something that people who took the “safe” path of investing in their own homes have managed to avoid, then is it really a crisis?

Or is it just a lack of poor planning on the part of too many people who wanted to live large without having the patience to wait until they could afford to do so?

UPDATE: Meanwhile, as Truthful Lending explains, the feds response to the poor planning entails authorizing the “the quasi-governmental agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to lessen their qualification requirements and allow more homeowners to refinance into conforming loans”, with the result that these agencies take on higher-risk notes so that the gub’ment benefits when those higher-risk borrowers do default. Can you say, “All your houses will belong to Them?” No??? Well, bend over and grab your ankles and see if that doesn’t help your pronunciation, folks.

Dan Spencer, known to many of us as California Yankee, has a new blog. Or, rather, he has a new look for a blog he’s been maintaining for a while now that the folks of Examiner.com have put him at the helm of Right Side Politics Examiner.

Congrats, Dan!

It took bloggers a matter of hours to discover that Cindy McCain’s “family recipes” posted on her husband’s campaign website were ripped off from the Food Network, but only a matter of minutes for the campaign to blame an intern for what’s now being called “Recipegate”.

Cindy McCain’s tuna recipe was actually developed and submitted to the Food Network by cookbook author and former “Cooking Thin” host Kathleen Daelemans. The recipe for farfalle pasta with turkey sausage, peas and mushrooms was a “quick pasta classic” from the TV show “Everyday Italian.” That old McCain standby — rosemary chicken — was a creation of TV chef Rachael Ray and was lifted, with a few changes, from the same Food Network site.

All three were listed on a McCain Web page titled “Cindy’s Recipes.”

Naturally, Dems wonder why an intern would have been tasked with finding the McCain “family” recipes, which is an admittedly valid question.

The incident came to light even as McCain continued debating with Clinton and Obama over who is “more in touch” with American voters. I can’t help wondering, though: just how in touch can McCain’s campaign be if they don’t grasp the sheer number of bloggers out there who are fact-checking every statement made, including recipes, and how the internet makes it so very easy for them to do so.

Is it just me, or does it seem particularly quite around the blogosphere to you today, too? It almost makes me wonder how many folks put off filing their taxes until the very last minute.

If you’ve been a good boy or girl and finished your taxes already, then it’s time to celebrate Tippling Tuesday, that vastly underrated and oft’ neglected day. This week, as luck would have it, I have a cocktail recipe that will take some of the pain out of Tax Day for you… even if you haven’t quite finished preparing your returns just yet.

The Income Tax Cocktail
Serves: 1

Ingredients:
2 oz gin
1/4 oz sweet vermouth
1/4 oz dry vermouth
1 oz orange juice
Angostura bitters to taste
orange twist for garnish

Directions: Pour everything in a shaker filled with ice. Shake vigorously and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish. Repeat until you don’t give a darn about how the check you just wrote the Feds dwarfs that “stimulus check” you’ll now be waiting on before you can afford to go drinking at a bar.

(Recipe via Slashfood)

When VH and I married, I resisted taking his last name. For one thing, I liked mine. Quite a bit, as a matter of fact. In comparison, his seemed dull and, more importantly, not mine.

Oh, sure, I realized that marriage meant mingling our incomes, our belongings and our body parts. But those things involved mingling, not a complete surrender and disavowal of the life I’d lived until the moment the “I Do’s” were done deals.

While I practiced law, he understood my reasons for keeping my maiden name for professional purposes. Once I left the practice, however, my desire to hyphenate became quite the issue. But I stood my ground for seven long years… right up to the point where he shut up about it. Then — and only then — was I willing to begin using his last name as my own.

Then again, neither of us had one of those names which should never, ever be hyphenated. C’mon, Aiken-Johnson? Wacker-Daily? Don’t these people read???