Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Soul Eaters

Friends, I’m still trying to figure out exactly what a “prophetic intercessor” (ala Cindy Jacobs of Generals International) does but — from what I’ve been able to deduce thus far, it’s something like JZ Knight’s “Ramtha” shtick — only with a Christian angle. Apparently the “intercessor” gets into some kind of deep “prayer” state (not unlike JZ Knight’s “trances”) and starts spewing lots of vague predictions about the future, often using oddly “Biblical” forms of sentence construction. For example:

The bell of liberty and freedom shall ring loud and clear, for My Spirit will go forth in unprecedented swiftness to blow the breath of God upon this nation and many more! Winds of the Spirit will begin to blow on the I-35 corridor as a blanket of white driven snow! A cleansing, purification unto “holiness” so all will know of my mercy and grace!

(Religious prophecy? Or weather forecast? You tell me.)

It’s all very weird. Cindy Jacobs is like the Amazing Kreskin of the fundamentalist set.

A number of prophecies that Cindy has given through the years have come to pass. One of them instructed people to invest in Alberta oil and that new deposits would open up in that province. One of the business leader’s did invest and he is very glad, as prices have shot up. Cindy also prophesied about a new kind of diamond that would be found in the north that had never been named and it has happened as well. Another word given was that the Taliban would be taken down in Afghanistan which was given before the 9/11 incident. The strangest word Cindy prophesied was about a plague of locust coming to Canada which also took place! Talk about living the supernatural life!

Indeed.

Anyway, so this Cindy Jacobs person is apparently a big shot in the world of “prophetic intercession”. I suspect, though, that she’s really a demon from hell. Look at the pictures of her and her husband on their web page. Look at their eyes.

Do you see it?

Empty and cold. There’s no warmth there at all.

And those smiles — they’re predatory. It’s really quite disturbing if you look at them long enough.

Seriously.

Today’s Entry in the “I Don’t Know Whether To Laugh Or Cry” Category

In today’s news…

Sudanese protesters demand death for teddy teacher – washingtonpost.com
Hundreds of Sudanese Muslims took to the streets of Khartoum on Friday demanding death for the British school teacher convicted of insulting Islam after her class named a teddy bear Mohammad.

And also in today’s news…

Papal encyclical attacks atheism, promises hope – washingtonpost.com
Pope Benedict, in a new encyclical released on Friday, said atheism was responsible for some of the “greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice” in history.

Ai yi yi…

You really just have to see it for yourselves. The weirdly manic middle-aged woman out by the freeway overpass is scary! And what the fuck is a “prophetic intercessor”?? Oh, wait… here’s the answer to all my questions.

Oh my. I’ll be spending some time looking at all of that! Meanwhile, you can all watch this very informative and entertaining video about people who believe I-35 is “the highway of holiness”.

And, no, I’m not kidding. Watch, watch…

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Tip o’ the hat to Perfect Duluth Day. Thanks for the great link!

Never Underestimate The Kick To The Groin

I think I’m in love. Really. I so dig this guy!

And, incidentally, he’s totally right about the effectiveness of a good swift kick in the nuts. When we were teenagers my brother and I got in a fight once (he was mean) and I connected with a good swift kick. Man oh man! He was down on the floor right now. To be completely honest, I felt terrible about it. I had no idea it would be quite that painful. You know, though… he pretty much left me alone after that…

Anyway, check out Bas Rutten here. He’s the best.

What We Ate

So, it’s the day after our National Day Of Gorging. (I like to call it N-DOG…) I’m sure many of you are wondering what we had for the Hartong Feast — seeing as how I am a 32-year vegetarian and the spouse is a flesh-eater.

Here’s how it went down.

First thing in the morning, I put a butternut squash in the oven to bake Do you want a recipe for all of this? Okay, here we go:

Butternut Squash Pie

Ingredients
1 medium butternut squash, split in half and with the seeds scooped out
2 eggs (organic, free-roaming, all that)
3/4 c brown sugar
1 can evaporated milk
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp cloves
1 9-inch frozen pie crust (okay, okay… so I’m terrible at making pie crust)

Method
Preheat the oven to 350.
Oil the cut side of the squash and bake it — cut side down — on a foil-lined baking sheet for about an hour. You want the thickest part of the squash to be easily pierced with a fork.
When it’s done, take it out of the oven and — as soon as you can — peel off the skin. It should come off easily if the squash it done. Put the skinned squash into a fine-mesh strainer over a bowl and let it drain for an hour or so. You’ll be surprised by how much water comes out of it.
While the squash is draining, up the oven temperature to 425 and let it pre-heat.
Here’s the fun-with-machines part. Toss the squash into a food processor and…uh…process it until it’s totally smooth and creamy. Then add everything else. I don’t think the order makes a whit of difference. Just dump it all on in there and give it a few spins until it’s completely mixed up.
Dump the squash stuff into the pie crust and stick it in the oven. If you’ve got more squash stuff than there’s room for in the pie crust hold onto it. We’ll get to that in a second.
Bake at 425 for 15 minutes.
Okay… if you had extra filling, here’s what you do with it. Butter a small casserole dish — or even a couple of those small Pyrex custard cups — and pour the filling in there. Voila! Squash custard! Yum! Don’t put it in the oven until you’ve lowered the temp in the next step, though. The higher temp is really mainly to bake the pie crust so you don’t need it for the custard.

After the 15 minutes are up, lower the temp on the oven to 350 and if you’ve got any custard that needs baking, stick that in the oven. Let all of this bake for…oh…45 to 50 minutes. You want it to be set in the middle. That is, not jiggly.

That’s it. That’s how you make squash pie. It’s WAY WAY better than pumpkin (though, of course, pumpkin IS a squash). The butternut squash — especially once you drain the extra water out of it — has a deeper and more complex flavor than he pumpkin you get out of a can (much of which, I have read, doesn’t necessarily come from pumpkins anyway.)

Okay… so on with the menu. I made the pie. Then I got started with the stuffing. I believe I make one of the best stuffings on earth. Though, it doesn’t ever actually get stuffed in anything. I suppose you COULD stuff it in something. But why?

I think another recipe is in order.

Don’t-Stuff-It Stuffing

Ingredients
1 loaf really good bread. In past years I’ve used a nice sesame semolina bread. This year I used a crusty multi-grain.
1 large onion. Or, as I did this year, 1 medium onion and 3 medium shallots. Diced.
About 3/4 cup diced carrot
About 3/4 cup diced celery
Way more butter than you probably should — about 3/4 of a stick
1 head garlic (we’re going to roast this)
About 3/4 cup chopped pecans
1 cup vegetable broth
Salt, pepper, maybe some fresh sage if you’ve got it, or some poultry seasoning

Method
Okay… Melt all that butter in a big frying pan over medium heat and toss in the onions, carrots, and celery. Salt the veggies — oh, maybe 1 teaspoon — to help them “sweat out” their delicious vegetabley goodness into the butter. Saute until soft.
While the veggies are sauteeing, rip the bread up into bite-sized chunks. Put them in a BIG bowl. You’ll want a lot of room for stirring everything together.
Toast the pecans. I just spread them out in the little baking pan that came with my toaster oven and baked them at 250 degrees for about 20 minutes. Don’t burn!.
Roast the garlic. Here’s the method I find easiest: Peel all the skin off the cloves, wrap them tightly in some foil, bake in the toaster oven at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.
When the garlic’s done, smoosh it into a paste and toss it in the bowl with the bread. Put the veggies and the pecans in with the bread, too. Stir everything together really well.
Add salt and pepper to taste. And herbs. Yesterday I used some fresh sage that I’d minced. Poultry seasoning works well. You’re not an idiot — you can figure out what amount is reasonable.
Use the rest of the butter to grease a baking dish. I use a Pyrex glass 9×16. (I think those are the dimensions. Look it up.) Dump the stuffing in, spread it out, Bake this in a 400 degree oven for about half an hour. You want it crusty on top and a little mooshy in the middle.
That’s it. It’s quite delicious. You can reheat this in the microwave or in a frying pan an it’s an excellent left-over.

Okay… so. Those were the more involved dishes. I also made mashed potatoes. (Boil potatoes until soft. Drain. Add some butter and some cream. Mash with a masher. I’d avoid the electric beater, if I were you. The lumps are what makes mashed potatoes yummy.) I also whipped up some quick cranberry sauce. (People make this so complicated! Just boil 1 lb of raw cranberries with 1 cup sugar and 1 cup water. For 5 minutes. Smoosh the cranberries against the side of the pan while it’s boiling. Oh, and watch out. This stuff will spatter all over your stove if you give it even half a chance. After 5 minutes, pour it into a bowl and it will thicken up while it cools. Gotta love that natural pectin.)

Mark insisted on some dead bird so he cooked up a turkey breast. I bought him a can of turkey gravy. He’s not all that fussy.

It was an excellent meal for all concerned. We had sparkling apple cider with it — Mmmmm.

Next year, photos!

Staying Poor

Eugene Robinson – Tattered Dream – washingtonpost.com
Even more troubling is that our notion of America as the land of opportunity gets little support from the data. Americans move fairly easily up and down the middle rungs of the ladder, but there is “stickiness at the ends” — four out of 10 children who are born poor will remain poor, and four out of 10 children who are born rich will stay rich.

This is not particularly surprising. The explanation, though — at least what I believe the explanation to be — isn’t one a lot of people like to hear.

Poor people of all races and religions tend to remain poor [in the United States] because they’re stuck in a “culture of ignorance”. It doesn’t matter if they’re living in Mississippi or North Dakota.

A friend of mine who teaches high school in northern Minnesota sees it all the time. Many of the kids in his district come from relatively poor families. Their parents never did well in school — they didn’t “need to” because there were plenty of jobs in the iron mines — so the kids don’t feel any pressure to do well either. When my friend (cautiously) broaches the subject with the parents during parent-teacher conferences, he almost invariably hears something to the effect of “Why should my kid learn about math and chemistry? I didn’t learn it and I did fine.” Yeah, they did fine alright. When the mines started closing down they got a part-time job checking groceries at the local Piggly Wiggly and went on food stamps. Learn to read books? Why? They’ve got television. No need for reading.

There’s a failure of imagination at work here — and it’s born of ignorance. When you can’t picture yourself doing anything better, you don’t teach your kids to think any differently about their lives either.

Likewise, families where education and professional “attainment” have been valued are families with kids who grow up passing those same values on to their own offspring.

None of this is meant to downplay the fact that simply having enough money to pay for a good education makes a difference — but growing up in a family where education is valued is critical and, for the most part, you’ve got to already have a good education to realize how it important it is. So I guess, in a way, being ignorant (and consequently poor) is a sort of inherited disorder.

Thanks

I sent out Thanksgiving e-cards this year and I listed two things for which I’m thankful:

1. Only about a year and two months before Bush is out of office.
2. At least Dick Cheney’s not President.

I think my father-in-law was a little offended. He sent email saying that there are better things to be thankful for.

I was sort of joking around with my list but, the more I think about it, the more I think maybe I’m on the right track.

Of course, I’m thankful for my health and I’m thankful for the people I know and love. But those are all kind of selfish things — they make my life easier but they don’t do much to change the world for the better.

On the other hand, if you believe — as I do — that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are literally very bad for our entire world, then knowing they’ll soon be out of office… well, that really IS something for which to be extremely thankful. There’s not much to be optimistic about these days — on the grand scale of what’s going on with our planet, I mean — so I’ll take my good news where I can find it.

Depression

Carolyn Hax – CAROLYN HAX – washingtonpost.com
Depression is slippery. It can come from brain chemicals that tell you a perfectly good life is dreary — or it can come from a dreary life that starts to affect your brain chemicals. It can also tell you that it’s your fault you have a dreary life and so distract you from the fact that you might have a treatable illness or a fixable life.

Although I always enjo Carolyn Hax’s column in the Washingotn Post, I don’t usually find anything in it that’s blogworthy. (Though, lately, not much seems blogworthy to me anyway.) This, though, is one of the best descriptions of depression I think I’ve ever read.

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Oh, I should add — in case anyone was concerned — that I’m not depressed. I just know people who get depressed from time to time.

Resistance Is Futile

Robotic Roaches Mess with Real Bugs’ Minds: Scientific American
Safety in numbers has pretty much ruled in the animal kingdom. But now researchers are discovering that artificially intelligent robots can change animals’ natural instinct to live as a group, prompting them to form new patterns of behavior.

Well, of course. Anyone who knows anything about the Borg knows that. Well… in reverse, sort of, at least.

Bush Re-Inserts His Head Firmly In His Ass

Bush More Emphatic In Backing Musharraf – washingtonpost.com
President Bush yesterday offered his strongest support of embattled Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying the general “hasn’t crossed the line” and “truly is somebody who believes in democracy.”

Bush spoke nearly three weeks after Musharraf declared emergency rule, sacked members of the Supreme Court and began a roundup of journalists, lawyers and human rights activists. Musharraf’s government yesterday released about 3,000 political prisoners, although 2,000 remain in custody, according to the Interior Ministry.

After a while, a person runs out of creative ways for responding to that kind of nuttiness. Musharraf — believes in democracy?!??? What the fuck?

Right. That’s why for years he refused to step down as leader of Pakistan’s military.

I’m telling you: Musharraf bends over and Bush puckers up. Bush’s appeasement of Musharraf is just another sign of his complete inability to put together a foreign policy seated in “reality-based” principles.

So, it looks like into the foreseeable future, the US will continue to look the other way while Musharraf squashes democracy in Pakistan — so we can get his help in fighting the forces that threaten democracy in the rest of the world.

Uh…yeah. Okay. Right.