Nary an Original Thought

I don’t normally do “product endorsements” around here, but I’m going to make an exception today. I went out to lunch with a couple of guys from work today to check out a little hole-in-the-wall barbecue place called BBQ4U near 14th and Hwy 2. The Tuesday Special is a huge beef brisket sandwich for $4. I worked the POGO card so my buddy and I each ended up with the sandwich, two sides, and a drink for just south of $6 each. The sandwich was about 5 inches in diameter, with beef spilling out the sides. They have a range of BBQ sauces, ranging from Sauce for Sissies (yes, that’s what it’s called) to some stuff called Da Bomb that comes in a grenade-shaped bottle and has to be kept behind the counter for liability reasons. The sandwich was fantastic. My coworkers and I are currently working out a schedule so we can try a different lunch special one week at a time.

Speaking of their specials, Monday’s is a $3 pork sandwich. Wednesdays are smoked wings. The owner brought out a half-dozen of them for us to try and we were speechless. I’m a wing guy, and I’ve never had wings like these before. Thursday’s special is a 3lb. rack of ribs for $14, which can serve 2-3 people.

I’ll admit that the name is a little cheesy, and their website could use some work. Thankfully, these guys focus their attention on the food, and it shows. The owner is a Vietnam vet who has a tremendous amount of pride in his craft. If you’re in Lincoln, I would encourage you to give them a try. (Map and Directions)

Dave Barry is funny. A few of my favorite excerpts from his 2008 Year in Review:

January: A mesmerizing speaker, Obama electrifies voters with his exciting new ideas for change, although people have trouble remembering exactly what these ideas were because they were so darned mesmerized. Some people become so excited that they actually pass out. These are members of the press corps.

April: Congress, responding to the financial pain of the American people, goes into partisan gridlock faster than ever before, with Republicans demanding that the oil companies immediately start drilling everywhere, including cemeteries, and Democrats calling for a massive effort to develop alternative energy sources such as wind, the sun, tides, comets, Al Gore and dragon breath, using technology expected to be perfected sometime this millennium. It soon becomes clear that Congress will not actually do anything, so Americans start buying less gasoline.

July: Barack Obama, having secured North and South America, flies to Germany without using an airplane and gives a major speech — speaking English and German simultaneously — to 200,000 mesmerized Germans, who immediately elect him chancellor, prompting France to surrender.

Meanwhile John McCain, at a strategy session at a golf resort, tells his top aides to prepare a list of potential running mates, stressing that he wants somebody ”who is completely, brutally honest.” Unfortunately, because of noise from a lawn mower, the aides think McCain said he wants somebody ”who has competed in a beauty contest.” This will lead to trouble down the road.

August: In yet another troubling economic indicator, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rob a liquor store.

September: The Republican convention gets off to a tentative start in St. Paul when President Bush and Vice President Cheney are unable to attend, partly because of Hurricane Gustav, and partly because the organizers told them that the convention was in Atlanta. The mood improves when Sarah Palin dazzles the delegates with her winning smile, detailed knowledge of what is on the teleprompter, and spot-on imitation of Tina Fey.

November: As it becomes increasingly clear that the federal government’s plan of giving hundreds of billions of dollars to dysfunctional companies has not fixed the problem, the government comes up with a bold new plan: give more hundreds of billions of dollars to dysfunctional companies. Soon the government is in a bailout frenzy, handing out money left and right, at one point accidentally giving $14 billion to a man delivering a Domino’s pizza to the Treasury building.

December: The CEOs of the Increasingly Small Three auto makers return to Washington to resume pleading for a bailout, this time telling Congress that if they can reach an agreement that day, they will throw in the undercoating, the satellite-radio package AND a set of floor mats. ”We’re actually LOSING MONEY on this deal!” they assure Congress. Finally they reach a $13.4 billion agreement under which the car companies will continue to provide jobs, medical insurance and pension benefits, but will cease producing actual cars. The agreement will be overseen by the federal government, using its legendary ability to keep things on budget.

Behold! I present you with The Best Christmas Song Ever:

Says Dan Siedell:

Art and religion both require belief for them to work. For the religious believer, water sprinkled over the head of an infant is more than a hair washing, it is the work of regeneration by the Holy Spirit; drinking a thimbleful of wine and eating a wafer is more than a snack, it is the body and blood of Jesus Christ, what the Church Fathers called the “medicine of immortality.” So it is with the believer in art. For this believer, a clump of fired clay with pretty decorations on it is more than the sum total of its materials, it is something more, it is “art,” an object with meaning and significance, an object that enriches one’s life with beauty. For the believer in art, a painting is more than the sum total of its banal and quite silly materials: smelly oil paints brushed onto a canvas sheet. It does something.

There are many who do not believe in religion. They think it is silly. They do not believe that water is a means by which the Holy Spirit saves or wine and bread the means by which Christ nourishes us. But there are also many who do not believe in art. They think it is silly. They go to an art museum and do not find powerful experiences of beauty and transcendence, they find only clumps of clay with decorations on them, canvas sheets with oil paints smeared on them. Art and religion are sacramental practices. They both require belief on the part of their participants that elements of the material world: water, oil, wine, bread, canvas, clay, oil paint, paper, and graphite are the distinctive means by which the immaterial comes to us. The transcendent appears to us through the vehicle of the immanent.

Mommy actually works at Home Depot, where she sells shovels. What were you thinking?

There’s an article over at Slashdot about the mysterious absence of acorns across the country this year. Nobody really knows what’s going on, but one commenter suggested that squirrels may have lost everything after having placed their acorn crop in highly leveraged investment vehicles. The Media have picked up on the story, noting the hardship the squirrel community is facing has led many to take second jobs. Some even believe that Congress will need to step in with a bailout package before the end of the year, before things get worse. Barney Frank has gone as far as suggesting that Congress set up a fund to finance the deployment of an army of blind sows, pointing out that they are known for their ability to find acorns every once in a while.

Japan zoo finds polar bears fail to mate as both are female

Yeah. That would be a problem.

HT: The Point

I’ve been seeing a lot of examples of this faux-miniaturization technique lately. Full-size scenes are processed with a tilt-shift effect, making them appear to be miniatures of the real thing. Pretty cool, if you ask me. Smashing Magazine has put together a list of 50 of these, and there are some real good ones on the list.

I had to finish up some work last night from home, and when I needed a break I fired up Fireworks and gave tilt-shifting a try, miniaturizing my alma mater. I’ve called it “Model University“. I’m not sure that I fully have the hang of it, but it was fun to make. I’ll probably try this out a few more times, until I get bored and move on to something else…

Apparently, nobody’s safe in the current credit crisis:

HT: Challies

Partial Birth Abortion is never necessary to protect the mother’s health. Let me repeat that. Medically, there is never a situation that a Partial Birth Abortion would be necessary to protect a woman’s health.

From The Continuum:

If a pregnancy ought to be terminated in a late term, there is no reason why the baby has to die. For several years doctors have been able to induce early labor and birth without killing the child. Hospitals have a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for premature births. Partial Birth Abortion is a procedure that comes after such an induced early labor, only the baby is not placed in a NICU. Instead, scissors are inserted into the back of the helpless child’s head, and a tube sucks out the brain. This is what the pro-abortion people call a “medical procedure.”

Inasmuch as there is no medical reason to kill the baby instead of making use of a NICU, it is painfully obvious that the only reason for Partial Birth Abortion is to complete a contract killing. There is never a medical reason to kill the child. (emphasis mine)

This makes sense. If the baby has already been delivered, except for the top of its head, how could it possibly be “medically necessary” to end the procedure with the death of the child instead of completing the delivery and sending the child off to the NICU and, ultimately, parents who will love him? Instead, the doctor becomes a hitman and “takes care of” the problem.

Say what you want, but I would suggest that Partial Birth Abortion is more satanic than anything you’ve ever seen in some Halloween movie involving candles and a pentagram. What else could we call the intentional destruction of image-bearers by hands and instruments that were intended to preserve life, if not satanic? Isn’t this exactly what the Murderer has been up to since the Garden? And now we’ve elected, as a nation, a leader who believes that his role as the Executive Officer of this country involves protecting, and even subsidizing, this wicked, detestable act, under the guise of wanting to “protect life.”

I’ve done a lot of thinking since the election about my perspective on and analysis of Barack Obama as the next president of the United States. I’ll post more on this soon, but for now I’ll just say I plan on praying for him and respecting the office that he holds. God put him there for a reason. Let us not grieve as those who have no hope, and so on. I get it. What I refuse to do, however, is to pretend that he is anything but a wicked, evil man who wishes (and has even promised) to expand the culture of death that has gripped our country to the point where we stab children in the skull with scissors and call it “protecting the life of the mother”.

HT: Touchstone Magazine