The Night Writer
http://thenightwriterblog.powerblogs.com/
Illuminating fun, faith, family and foolishness.en-us2008-05-09T20:05+00:00Black Friday
http://thenightwriterblog.powerblogs.com/posts/1210365406.shtml
...The Night Writer2008-05-09T20:05+00:00
Katie is pulling the plug on Yucky Salad With Bones. Why? Well, like her header says, "for no good reason."
I started this thing what, about 4 years ago, for no other reason than I thought it would be fun. I never paid any attention to how many hits I got, not because I'm some counterculture goth girl or anything, more due to the fact that other issues were more pressing, like the kitchen was on fire or a kid was hanging off a precarious ledge or something. Oh let's see, the other day I got home from a run to find them all out in the front yard, trying to dislodge an arrow from a second story shutter by heaving various heavy objects at it. Hmm. Nothing like coming home to find the troops throwing rocks and footballs at the windows.
But I wanted to make a formal goodbye, so long and thanks for all the fish. Really, I can't tell you how much I appreciated y'all reading.
Stay classy, San Diego.
Obviously the woman has issues, which is what made it such a fun blog to visit anyway, even if the name never made sense. But what did you expect from someone who'd name her kid Finbar? Still she made me laugh. Hard. So hard that peanut butter would come out of my nose, that's how hard. Who now will give us those riveting, streams-of-subconscious reviews and endless paragraphs about the Oscars and American Idol, who will stand Culture Watch and bring back the report? People like me laugh easily in our homes at night because we want people like her on That Wall. There's probably some Irish blessing to use in a time like this, something about 'may the blogs rise up to meet you' or 'may you be in heaven 30 minutes before Technorati knows you're dead' but I'm not Irish, or Katie, so then Adieu and bonne chance to the Salad. Not that I'm French, either, but using those words saves me from having to type what I really want to say but don't usually allow on this blog, which is "Damn."
]]>Betcha Can't Guess What This Post Is About!
http://thenightwriterblog.powerblogs.com/posts/1210352192.shtml
Cupcakes!...Mall Diva2008-05-09T16:05+00:00
I was volunteered by our very own Princess Flickerfeather to make cupcakes for a special, if sad, occasion. I'm in the praise and worship band at church, and we practice every other Tuesday night. This past Tuesday we had practice, but it was also a going away party for one of our band members...*sniff*. We'll miss you, Mel!
Now that's a mouthful, in more ways than one! From the site that is turning out to be one of my very VERY favorites~ Cupcake Bakeshop! Give Chockylit a hand!
You may be wondering why the hack my cupcakes aren't as pretty as Chickylit's. That's because I'm a novice, and actually, I only made 4 cupcake prototypes. They came out of the oven a little sunken and crumbly and not wanting to be filled. I was distraught until my mother came in and saved the day.
"Why don't you just crumble them in to a cake pan and layer it with all the ganache and frosting?" So I did. I called it "Not quite a cupcake", and it was a huge hit. Yay! What would I do without you, Mom? Well, I'd probably serve cupcakes that were messy and not aesthetically pleasing.
]]>Guess who it is!
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The Nighthens are out for coffee at Cupcake on University W. in Minneapolis....The Night Hens2008-05-09T16:05+00:00
The coffee is a little bitter, and could be smoother, but its drinkable. According to TL the hot chocolate is watery.
RM: How's your cupcake?
TL: It's nutty and coconutty.
MD I think I want some of those baby cakes.
TL: Hmmmmm. One out of four stars for Speedracer.
MD: All that movie is is special effects.
TL: Well, yeah, but the only reason Angelina and I want to see it is because there is a cute guy with white hair in it. She and I have a thing for cute guys with white hair.
RM: I like that distressed wall. Maybe I should distress the front entry that way.
TL: You just like distressed walls. "Oh, I like that wall, its distressed." You're kind of sick that way.
RM (referring to pastries): This is too rich, I cant eat it all.
MD: Oooo, I'll have another bite.
MD: I want to try every single cupcake.
(going off on a completely different tangent) Actually, I think I'm the best typer.
RM: Of course, we all think we're the best typer, but I'm the only one who actually knows how to type.
MD: Oh, and the rest of us are just banging with our elbows.
TL: Yeah, are we just monkeys with typewriters?
RM: Basically
RM leaves for bathroom.
TL: steals computer.
RM comes back from bathroom
RM: Hey! Give that back!
TL: No!
MD: They don't like our kind here.
RM: Who doesn't like us?
MD: The servers and everyone.
RM: You can tell?
MD: Yeah, by the merchandise.
RM: Tell us about Molly.
MD: Um, yesterday I was telling one of my clients about Benny and how we were going to get married in about 2 1/2 years when he gets done with school. And Molly was saying how I was going to be a pastor's wife and have my little church cookbook and be on Oprah with it. And I told Molly how I want to be a rock star and she said they would have me sing and everyone would be screaming. And then Louise, my client said "You can sing? You can come and sing a song at my funeral." And I asked her how she would be able to enjoy it.
TL: I need money for a swimsuit.
MD: Well, if you'd do your job Mom would pay you for it.
TL: I need the chemical.
MD: Mom, you're not providing her with the chemical? What kind of enabler are you?
TL: Can you imagine someone walking into a room and saying, 'it smells like a laptop in here?'
RM: No, I can't actually imagine that.
MD: Even though, I'm only doing updos today I still wish I didn't have to go to work. It just puts a big wrinkle in my day.
TL: Are you getting points?
MD: Yup, I'm getting 8 points today.
TL: Are you beating Molly?
MD: Yup, beating her like a rented mule.
MD: Look at my long nail, look at my other one. Look at my worst one.
RM: Aaaaaaah!
TL: Look at my long nails. I'm beating you.
MD: Are you beating me like a redheaded stepchild?
TL: Yeah.
TL: So far there's been no need for my knife.
RM: You're just waiting for someone to walk up and attack you so that you can knife them?
TL: Yeah, but you know I'd only use the flat of the blade.Thankfully my knife matches my shirt. It's a grave thing when your knife doesn't match your shirt.
RM: I don't think the world is violent enough for you.
TL: Alas, I fear I shall never reach my violence quota.
RM: Oh my God. Look at that torso hanging from the ceiling.
TL: I saw that. It looks like a Halloween decoration. Why do all the scary words start with M? Macabre, morose.
RM: How about Mom?
MD: Morose isn't scary.
TL: What's it mean?
RM: Sad.
RM grabs newspaper, unaware of cup sitting on top of it. Cup falls over. Hot chocolate spills out on MD's purse
MD: Shi...Mom!
RM: Oops.
Much hastened evacuation of the purse's contents.
MD: Okay, time to go so I can wash my purse.]]>Be there, be square
http://thenightwriterblog.powerblogs.com/posts/1210182752.shtml
...The Night Writer2008-05-09T03:05+00:00
I found the link to Square America, described as "A gallery of vintage snapshots & vernacular photography", while browsing commenter Charlie's blog, Virile Lit:
I've been loving Square America for some time now and want to urge you to check it out. It's a web site wherein the curator chronicles the history of the U.S. in snapshots he has obtained by combing resale stores, estate sales, and other dusty archives for random, found photographs he then assembles into themed web-based exhibits. The results are simply fascinating. Text doesn't even enter into it, only the images and you.
It's a fabulous site that sucks you in as you browse the casual, even amateurish, old snapshots that still can't help but communicate a sense of time and place. Beyond that, I often found myself thinking, "I almost know these people — and I know I've seen those curtains before." Cruise on over and spend a few minutes going back a few decades.
]]>I need you to do something for me, and for them
http://thenightwriterblog.powerblogs.com/posts/1210221775.shtml
All across the country tonight, and right here in the state of Minnesota, parents played with their children, tucked them in, listened to their prayers, kissed them, and told them they...The Night Writer2008-05-08T04:05+00:00
I have to believe that.
I have to because the stuff that does make the papers is enough to make you despair of the madness in this world. A "hunter" father who stocks up on beer and pot for a hunting trip but can't be bothered to buy a hunting license and forgets, apparently, what a turkey looks like, shoots and kills his 8-year-old son. A mother puts her 2-year-old son and 11-month-old daughter in a bathtub full of water and leaves them alone while she shops on-line for new shoes, needing the 2-year-old to come and tell her "something's wrong" as the infant girl drowns. A massive professional football player decides to play a game of "let's see if you can get out of a plastic bag" with his two year old son, who is fortunately rescued by his mother. A couple of weeks ago I read about a mother in Chicago who drowned her baby girl in the bathtub because having to care for the baby was cutting into her partying.
In the first two cases, anyway, the reports are that the so-called adults are devastated by what happened, and some people even suggest that the legal sanctions be limited because the perpetrators are already suffering. And to that a little piece of me deep down inside says, "Good," even though I know I should be compassionate and prayerful.
What I don't know is what happened to the parental wiring in each of these cases to short-circuit certain instincts. I know that kids can be very frustrating and time-consuming and can wreak havoc on your neat little existence. That is not a capital offense, however, even if it seems as if our culture treats being able to do what you want to do as a sacred thing.
You know, I like doing my own thing too, but I knew the first time I held my first-born that I would willingly die for her; literally if called upon and figuratively every day as I adjusted my life in countless ways big and small to make a place for her (and later her sister) in this world. And I don't say that to suggest that I'm exceptional in any way; in fact, I think that that is or should be the norm even though the headlines increasingly suggest that that is not the case.
CHICAGO — Chicago police say a man died as he tried to shield his four-year-old daughter from an auto allegedly driven by a man under the influence of a controlled substance.
Joseph Richardson was walking his daughter Kaniyah to a McDonald's for burgers late Monday when a car jumped the curb. Police say the 39-year-old Richardson grabbed his daughter and held her up out of harm's way just before the car slammed the two into a fence.
Richardson was pronounced dead at the scene. Kaniyah was taken to Comer Children's Hospital in serious condition.
Police say the driver of the car, 32-year-old Angelo Thomas of Chicago, was charged with two felony counts of aggravated DUI. Witnesses say the man was driving erratically before the accident.
Richardson, a church musician, was the father of three, two girls and a boy, all under the age of 10.
Now that's a father, willing to leave himself in the path of danger in an effort to move his child out of harm's way. In fact, he probably didn't even have to think about it, he just did it. The sad irony is that this little girl will grow up without getting to know this man, while in 3 of the other cases the parent is still here and it is the child that is gone.
Tomorrow, do this in their memory, and in honor of Joseph Richardson: play with your children, tuck them in, listen to their prayers, kiss them. Tell them that you love them.
]]>Well would you look at that...
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There's been a lot of discussion on the radio the last couple of days about whether NBC should or shouldn't show the video of Eight Belles breaking down after crossing the...The Night Writer2008-05-07T03:05+00:00
I hadn't watched the race, but assumed the replay would show the incident in its entirety when I got around to watching SportsCenter that night. I was a little surprised but not disappointed when ESPN didn't show it. In fact, I was a little relieved. Thinking it was coming up had me steeling myself kind of (but not as intensely) in the same way I had prepped myself for the opening moments of Saving Private Ryan the first time I watched that movie. I knew it was an important news story, but I don't typically get a lot of entertainment value out of seeing animals suffer.
The discussions the next day reminded me of 1978 when I was in Journalism School at the University of Missouri. It was right after Karl Wallenda had fallen to his death during a high wire stunt in San Juan. The fall had been taped and the networks showed him falling but cut away before impact. A group of my fellow J-schoolers and I were sitting at the Old Heidelberg, arguing over whether or not they should have stayed with the image all the way down (I was on the side of cutting away). Some argued that it was "news" and therefore legitimate to be shown, no matter how grim. Others of us said the point was made and the story was told without the final moment and that to show the ending was gratuitous and sensational. Yet another person suggested that the whole reason a news camera was there in the first place was because of the chance that he might fall. Nothing was resolved then (do college arguments ever resolve anything?) but I think I could feel myself already withdrawing from what I thought was going to be my profession.
It's not as though I, and my generation of television viewers, hadn't already been sensationalized with a number of startling scenes. Already I'm sure we'd seen Evel Knievel break himself a couple of times on Wide World of Sports, and I also remember living in Indianapolis in 1973, during what was perhaps the grimmest year in the history of the Indy 500. That May we saw Art Pollard crash during practice or time trials, his car flipping and sliding upside down along the back straightaway, killing him. The start of the actual race that year saw another crash in the front rows, with Salt Walther's car driving up over the wheel of another racer and flipping into the air, losing it's nose cone and it, too, landing upside down near the infield with Walther's legs and feet sticking out of the remaining shell of the car (Walther would live, but endured a long and painful rehabilitation). Even more dramatically than that, later in the race, driver Swede Savage crashed off the outside wall then the inside wall and his car literally disintegrated around him leaving him sitting in the middle of the track, beating at the invisible alcohol flames with his arms and hands while rescue workers raced to his side, with one would-be rescuer being hit and run over by an emergency vehicle driving the wrong way out of Pit Row. I remember seeing that man's body laying crumpled in the infield as well. (Savage would ultimately die nearly a month later from complications arising from his injuries). All of these images were brought into our homes, over and over, via the magic box.
Still later in my life I would be watching the night Joe Theisman's leg was snapped on live television, and I've seen things done to Moises Alou's and Robin Ventura's legs that legs aren't supposed to do. I wasn't watching these events in the hopes of seeing these things, but there they were and I couldn't look away.
I suppose there is a percentage (likely a small one) of auto-racing fans that go to races hoping to see a crash, just as there are those who go to (or watch) hockey games hoping to see a fight (or a player nearly be decapitated by a skate such has happened earlier this year). Similarly, I know that "gawker slow-downs" around a traffic accident scene don't have much to do with drivers suddenly becoming very attentive and careful with their driving and there are probably cave paintings somewhere of slow-running hunters being trampled by mammoths, too.
There's just a vicariousness, and sometimes empathy, about us that draws us to the unusual and even painful. Sometimes it can ultimately be helpful. The '73 Indy crashes led to dramatic safety changes in the engineering and fuel capacity of the cars and there's talk that last weekend's events at Churchill Downs will spur greater strides in horse safety ranging from breeding to more use of synthetic track surfaces that are easier on the horses' legs. The one thing that wont change is that we'll still like to look.
]]>Manival #2 is on the prowl
http://thenightwriterblog.powerblogs.com/posts/1210086123.shtml
The second Manival blog carnival is up and hosted this week by A Good Husband. Following Uncle Ben's advice, I submitted last week's post about the discussion (or lecture)...The Night Writer2008-05-06T15:05+00:00Manival blog carnival is up and hosted this week by A Good Husband. Following Uncle Ben's advice, I submitted last week's post about the discussion (or lecture) from our last Fundamentals in Film class to the carnival, and it was accepted.
There are some other very interesting-looking posts in this week's collection that I'm looking forward to reading. In particular, "Is It More Important to Be a Good Dad or a Good Husband", "Thou Shalt Get a Job", "7 Reasons Atticus Finch is a True Gentleman" and "Man Up: The Art of Marital Conversation" plus several more.
Check it out, and if you'd like to submit a blog post to next week's Manival you can use this carnival submission form.
]]>A dad in the night
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I was sitting up late the other night,...The Night Writer2008-05-06T01:05+00:00
not paying much attention to the TV flickering in my face
as I thought about Daughter #1 and the plans
spinning in her life,
all while I waited for Daughter #2 to
come home from a group outing.
Then this video came on, and I knew that sleep
was a long way off,
and that tomorrow was much too soon.
]]>Good group(ing)
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A group of us from church got together this morning for something we consider pretty sacred: target shooting. There were about a dozen of us that showed up over the...The Night Writer2008-05-03T22:05+00:00target shooting. There were about a dozen of us that showed up over the course of the morning and early afternoon and we rented 3 lanes. I got to shoot my pastor's semi-automatic, my brother-in-law's target pistol and a couple of .22 bolt-actions, one with a scope. I didn't bring my rifle because I was dropping my truck off at Tires Plus for an oil change on the way and I didn't want to wait around in their parking lot holding a gun while waiting for my ride in these oh-so-sensitive days.
I hadn't been shooting for a couple of years so I was looking forward to it. When I first got into a lane today I opened the rifle case and started to load the magazine with longs. I'm always pretty careful and intent when I'm handling live ammunition, especially with a gun I'm not familiar with. I'd carefully thumbed about three shells into the clip when the guy in the lane next to me, unseen behind the partition, suddenly opened up with a Desert Eagle, with about the same feel and effect on me as if I'd had defibulator paddles placed on my chest. After double-checking the status of my peewadding and that I hadn't just blown my hand off, I took a cleansing breath and finished my task, ready to make a little noise of my own. Sure, the little snapping sound of the .22 following the Desert Eagle was like a chihuahua yipping after the mastiff had walked well down the street, but it was still fun.
My first grouping was fairly close together but high and left; after a few adjustments I started working my way into the black. One of the young men in our group had the same rifle, but with a scope on it. "A scope?" I asked. "I suppose you take cream in your coffee, too." Nevertheless, I had to give it a try. I ran the target out to 50 feet and the guy told me I needed to aim just a little left of the bullseye. I did a few of these and saw that the gun actually was shooting true, so I adjusted. After reeling the target back in I was told that the young man was shooting from 25 feet, not 50. Since the pre-printed targets on that sheet were already pretty perforated, we stuck a black dot on the lower part of the sheet between two previous targets. This dot had a yellow film inside that would show up when it was hit. I ran the target out to 25 feet, looked through the scope fired another 10 shots, working the bolt between each. Here's the result:
Their are nine holes in the dot and one down below. (The larger target directly above is the one I shot at from 50 feet). Okay, so it was only 25 feet and with a scope. If someone were to break into my home with malicious intent and stood still 25 feet in front of me, he'd be in trouble.
I moved down to the pistol lanes, and that was a lot of fun. That darn bullseye can be pretty elusive with a handgun, but one of the fathers there and I had a pretty good competition going. I was kind of handicapped while going through one magazine, though. There was a guy in the lane next to me with a 9mm semi-automatic who was practicing for his Conceal and Carry permit, and I kept getting hit in the head with his spent cartridges as they ejected out of his gun. Call it battle conditions, I guess.
It was amazing at how quickly we disposed of about 1000 rounds of ammunition (I bought 200 rounds myself for the people who's guns I used). It was, literally, a blast. I can't wait to get out again. Maybe we'll even challenge another church to a little contest!]]>In the Land of Cupcakes
http://thenightwriterblog.powerblogs.com/posts/1209772533.shtml
Hey there, this is Uncle Ben. Diva is off in the kitchen right now, about to put the frosting on some cupcakes because it is, after all, Cupcake Friday. No word...Mall Diva2008-05-02T23:05+00:00
Oh for the love of Pete. There are three women in the kitchen doing a photo shoot with cupcakes. "You've got to add some craisins to the plate for color!" "Don't you dare touch that plate or I'll smack you upside the head with this spatula!!!" "Can't we all just get along?"
Hmm, it's a pretty open question as to whether they'll ever get a photo out of this. It might just devolve into a cupcake flinging fight. Hey, now that would be cool! I'll be right back!
Rats.
...
You naughty Ben! Get off my blog! Anyway, these are Coconut Kiss Cupcakes (no, no kissing was actually involved). The recipe is from Couture Cupcakes. Enjoy!
]]>
