JamesSavik

In the not so distant past, rural southern families kept pigs. Many of them selected one to have for a Christmas feast. Christmas week they would slaughter the pig and make smoked hams, sausage and all manner of porkly treats. For the piece de resistance, the pork loin was had for Christmas Eve dinner. For the sake of tradition, I made this classic meal for my Mom tonight. Two seasonal traditional recipes: Roasted Pork Loin Ingredients 3 cloves garlic, minced 1 tablespoon dried rosemary salt & pepper (to taste) 2 pound boneless pork loin 1/4 cup olive oil 1/2 cup white wine (sweet) Directions Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Crush garlic with rosemary, salt and pepper, making a paste. Pierce meat with a sharp knife in several places and press the garlic paste into the openings. Rub the meat with the remaining garlic mixture and olive oil. Place pork loin into oven, turning and basting with pan liquids. Cook until the pork is no longer pink in the center, about 1 hour. An instant-read thermometer inserted into the center should read 145 degrees F (63 degrees C). Remove roast to a platter. Heat the wine in the pan and stir to loosen browned bits of food on the bottom. Serve with pan juices. Butter Steamed New Potatoes Ingredients 2 pounds of new or very small red potatoes 1/2 cup of butter 1/4 cup of water 1 teaspoon of kosher salt, or to taste 1/2 teaspoon of freshly cracked black pepper, or to taste 1/4 cup of chopped fresh parsley, loosely packed Instructions Add the butter, water, salt and pepper to a medium saucepan and melt butter over low heat. Meanwhile, scrub the potatoes and peel a strip away from the center of each potato. Add to the saucepan, cover, and cook over low for 25 to 30 minutes. Roll potatoes around in the pan occasionally as they cook, but do not remove cover. Sprinkle the potatoes with the parsley, toss and transfer to a serving bowl, drizzling the remaining butter from the saucepan over the top. Serve immediately. Cook's Notes: New potatoes are tiny, with very thin, delicate skins and are the best potato for this dish. If using larger red potatoes you must cut them into quarters, or they will take too long to cook. May also substitute any other baking potatoes, but peel and cut those into bite sized chunks. Adjust cooking times as needed. Cut potatoes will also absorb more of the butter. May also substitute other herbs at the end; try chives, fresh sage, rosemary, thyme or basil, or use a dried herbes de Provence

Bobcats are anti-social and rude. Even bears don't go out of their way to mess with them. They have an evil tendency to go for the face.

There's a reason Japan always beat on China when they didn't have anything better to do. Once that mighty mass of people are united and moving in one direction, they will run over anything.

We are pleased to announce the arrival of our newest associate. Kitty Cleo is joining our firm in the position of chief ornament. We expect her to be astonishingly cute and outstandingly fuzzy.

*sighs* It's not about "affluenza". It's about the harshest sentence the Juvenile Court could impose.

I have no problems with eating animals. If they were bigger, they would eat us. We're just lucky the Saber-toothed tiger and velociraptor missed Noah's boat. (Or took a bad turn during the Jurassic period). WWRJD? (What Would Raptor Jesus Do?) I'm guessing he would be having the lamb.

Mark me down as a carnivore.

I believe we are missing a salient point. He was tried in Juvenile Court. They gave him the max that you can give a juvenile under their system. He is under long-term rehab (a year in-patient) + 10 years probation. If he screws up, he will have aged out from under his juvenile protections, he gets adult time. If statistics about alcoholics and recovery are realistic (and they are), he has an 80%+ chance to be drunk 3 months out of treatment.

In this case the suspect was tried in juvenile court. They did about as much as they could to him under that system. Don't think that long term alcohol rehab and probation are going to be a picnic. If he screws up again, he will have aged out from under the juvenile protections and will get prison time.

I do, I do! Good to see you Meeko!

Kitler: I can haz Poland?

OK- DON'T SHOOT THE MESSENGER 23 Vintage Ads that would be banned today http://www.boredpanda.com/vintage-ads/ Imgur Offensive ads: http://imgur.com/a/bT6c9

Pusheen's Christmas

you know how many mail carriers they lose to moose and bear attack every year?

Relatives: they aren't so bad when they're sober. (credit KC Grim for picture- it said things more eloquently than I could have)

My brother lives in a Dallas burb. We grew up watching the Cowboys under Tom Landry. My Dad liked Tom Landry and Bud Grant so we saw a lot of the Cowboys and the Vikings. After Landry, the Boys won when they had Aikman in his prime and so much talent but since then, they have been the very definition of mediocrity. The game sorely misses players and coaches that demand more than just talent. It takes talent to get there. It takes character to stay.

I used to do stuff like that. I had a number of places where I would go so I wouldn't have to deal with people for a while. That probably saved a few people from being brutally murdered. Hate to see a cute little kid doing the same thing.

Can't ... take... endless... mindless... Christmas muzak.... AAAAAARRRGGGHHHH!

Dallas continues to lose in December. (Big surprise) They were blown out by Chicago with a backup QB (McNown). When is the last time Chicago BLEW anybody out?! The Cowboys are a sad organization. After changing EVERYTHING else, Jerry Jones needs to take a long hard look in the mirror.

How to Write Descriptive Passages Without Boring the Reader (or yourself) Charlie Jane Anders http://io9.com/how-to-write-descriptive-passages-without-boring-the-re-1479764153 Describing stuff can be the hardest part of writing prose fiction. You have a scene in your head, with all the dialogue and action, but now you have to fill in what everything looks like. There's nothing more boring to write, or read, than a long descriptive passage — but here's how to spice it up. Descriptive passages are something I struggle with, both as a writer and as a reader. If I'm reading a book and hit a long paragraph of scene-setting, I have to struggle to keep from skimming a bit. And when I write my own fiction, I often find myself skimping on description, because I get bored doing it. How many ways can you describe a face? Or the layout of a particular building? How many ways are there to say "he had a square face and brown eyes." Probably the fact that I have a certain amount of face-blindness and no eye for décor doesn't help. But descriptive passages are important — they make the difference between your story feeling real, and it feeling like sketchy. Stories that don't provide enough description, or vivid enough description, feel like one of those 1970s Hanna-Barbera cartoons where people run past endless doodley backgrounds with no differentiation. The more you can engage your reader's senses, the more they'll feel present in the scene. So how can you create description that engages the reader instead of activating the dreaded "skim" reflex? There is no magic bullet, but here are some things that could help. Commit to never being boring. To avoid boring descriptions, you first have to make a decision that you won't settle for blocks of dull text. And stop thinking of the descriptive passages as wallpaper. You put a lot of effort into making your dialogue zingy and quotable — do the same for your descriptive passages. This sounds obvious, but it's an important first step. Engage all five senses. Again, starting with the obvious. Description isn't just visual and auditory, but also includes touch and smell. And maybe taste, if it's a kitchen or restaurant. Smells help a lot, especially vivid ones. Like a really pungent ammonia smell, or a dreadful musty smell. Mentioning the temperature of a room also helps sell that it's a real place. Ditto when you're describing a person — what do they smell like? What do their clothes feel like if you touch them? Try being super terse. Description can be vivid without being lengthy — in fact, you could argue that less is more when it comes to vividness of description. You can convey a lot with a few well-chosen words. Like: "The Apple Genius Bar had a gleaming white counter lined with eager T-shirt-clad acolytes, but the odor of stale coffee and fried motherboards assaulted her nostrils as soon as she approached." Make it dynamic rather than static. This is a huge one. Things change, and no person or place has been the same forever. Often, the best description tells a story. Like: "Judging from his bulk, he'd been a bodybuilder once, but then he'd run to seed." Or: "Someone had obviously bought a simple two-storey mock Tudor house and tried to add extra turrets to it, after which a second owner had tried to add some Japanese-style rice-paper screens to the front room." Description that takes you through the evolution of a person or thing is more memorable than a static snapshot. Make fun of the thing you're describing. Depending on the tone of your story, of course, you can go for humor. Like in one story I published in Lightspeed while back, I describe a character thusly: Peter had never liked looking at pictures of himself, because photos always made him look like a deformed clone of Ben Affleck. His chin was just a little too jutting and bifurcated, his brow a little too much like the bumper of a late-model Toyota Camry. His mousy hair was unevenly receding, his nose a little too knifey. I remember being really happy about that, because for once I managed to describe a character in a way that sticks in my mind. Between "deformed Ben Affleck clone" and "late-model Camry," I have a strong impression of what this guy looks like, even if it's kind of cartoony. Obviously, use in moderation, unless you're going for a full-on gonzo tone. A self-loathing POV character can describe him- or herself with alot of vitriol, though. Project feelings onto an inanimate object. When you're describing a person, you can give him or her some emotion, like a perpetual scowl or habitual laughter. But when you describe a thing or place, you just have to describe it, because things don't have feelings. Except that we project feelings onto them all the time. A chair might be friendly, or a particular pair of shoes might have it in for you. A building might look as though it's trying to drive you away, with its unwelcoming awnings and grim windows. Instead of a detached, factual description of the columns and arches, tell us how they're gritting their teeth at the main character. This is also good for setting a mood, and maybe a bit of foreshadowing. Give your POV some visceral or emotional reaction. In the same vein, try showing how a particular setting or someone's appearance affects your POV character. Maybe your main character really hates a particular building, and feels her spine stiffen and her shoulders go up as she approaches it. Maybe the smell of someone's basement makes her nauseous. Maybe seeing Mr. Bullyfrog's filthy teeth and smelling his foul breath makes her recoil. Vivid description often depends on depicting a strong personal reaction to something. Use less dialogue. If you're like me, then you're using the descriptive passages as a backdrop for your snappy dialogue — but what if your descriptions are so good, dialogue becomes unnecessary? It's worth trying, anyway — try taking a speech-heavy scene, and replacing half the dialogue with actions and descriptions of stuff that convey the same information and emotion. Maybe someone picking up a pair of binoculars that used to belong to the main character's grandfather, and holding their black leathery outer casing up to the light, can convey a whole world of stuff about grandpa. After all, the most interesting stuff in a scene is often what people don't say, and that's stuff they convey with body language, and the objects they stare at. Use description to set up a punchline in dialogue. Again, this is assuming you're more into writing dialogue, which seems to be the case with lots of us who were raised on TV and comics. If you want to have your character say something snappy like Oscar Wilde's famous last words, "Either that wallpaper goes, or I do," you'll need to make the wallpaper vivid in our minds way in advance so the line works. Sometimes you can force yourself to create vivid descriptions of surroundings by including verbal jokes that only work if the scenery is fixed in the reader's mind. Those are some of the tricks that help to make a scene more vivid — what techniques have you found useful for writing descriptions, in your own work?

Darn. If I had some warning, I would have put together a kegger or something.

Otherwise known as gut grenades. These fast food chains have been inspected by the UN for Chemical weapons violations.