I went out to gas up the car this morning, and -- thanks to the light layer of freezing drizzle -- it was already a bit of a hockey rink.

Weather forecasts say there will be unseasonable cold, snow that won't melt off the roads, and ice all the way down to frickin' Miami.

I can drive for two days, pay for hotels, and be a nervous wreck... or I can stay home and have exactly the same weather.

So, please forgive me, those of you who were hoping to see me at GAFilk. I'd love to be there, I'd planned to be there... but I'm a nervous nelly driving in this kinda stuff. Hugs to all, I hope you have a blast, and I'll see you at other cons.

Who is going to GAFilk this year?

Shared by Wil Wheaton, 100 games in 100 cupcakes.

How many have you played (or, if it's easier, not played)? I'm gonna go through the list, then update this post.

ETA: The really scary thing is that I have played all but about fifteen of 'em. I hadn't heard of a few, like Carcasonne. I missed a few because I forgot their names, e.g., Twixt. I haven't got around to Settlers of Catan yet. I misidentified Liar's Dice as Yahtzee, and the one for Charades (#32) was just weird.

Sometime tomorrow, I was planning on hitting the road for GAFilk.

See, I'm supposed to be at MarsCon in Virginia next weekend. My thought was, I'll go down to GAFilk, see everyone, get some hugs, play for awhile, then continue off to my dad's in north central Florida, and approach MarsCon from the south. Conveniently getting out of a Michigan January for a week and a half.

I do not know if I am going to do this.

The lesser problem is, I am fighting off a bit of a cold. (I saw my doctor on Tuesday, and she confirmed that's really all it is, a cold. I also got my flu and H1N1 shots, so I am now impervious, ha ha.) I don't want to give my friends whatever it is I have.

Much more to the point, the weather forecasts along the trip look awful. Literally, the entire I-75 corridor, from Findlay, OH down to Florida, is for not merely snow and cold, but a lot of snow and some deep cold.

I don't know what I'm going to do yet. I might try to skirt out of town tomorrow morning. I might wait till Friday, arriving at GAFilk Saturday.

I might say the heck with it, and hope nothing bad comes before I head off to MarsCon next week.

Grumble.

What's your plan for the weekend look like?

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A couple of weeks ago, Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama switched parties, becoming a newly-minted Republican. He was first elected to the House in... 2008.

And, gee, it hasn't worked out like he must've thought it would.

How politically tone-deaf can you get? And who exactly did he think he was going to court with this move?

Have fun, dude. You now are living proof that one man can make a difference -- with a single action, you have angered and cut off both sides.

Yesterday morning I was reading "Girl Genius". I then looked around at the mountain of old parts I have around and I decided I absolutely needed a CLANK!





I also don't usually do cute but I couldn't help it, he's too cute for me to sell.

In about an hour, the Food Network will debut an Iron Chef special, Super Chef Battle: Emeril Lagasse and Mario Batali vs. Bobby Flay and White House chef Cristeta "Cris" Comerford. It's on at 8:00 p.m. EST, and again at midnight, and a few more times on Thursday. I'll watch it as soon as I can download it, and we can talk about it here.

Can't help it. I'm rooting for Mario.

ETA: A diary at dKos has pictures and video.

Engaging Luke Ski Mode in three... two... one... engage!

And why we love her. (h/t jblaque)

So, I made boneless Buffalo chicken this afternoon. Blue cheese dressing, too. (The recipe called for Stilton, but implied Gorgonzola would be fine, and it was.)

I didn't have a thermometer at hand, and I didn't think to do the popcorn trick (put three popcorn kernels in the oil; when they've all popped, you're ready), so the oil wasn't hot enough to properly fry the coating. I'm pretty sure the chicken was cooked all right, though -- it was in the hot oil for over ten minutes, and the marinade kept it moist. The Buffalo sauce came out great, just a bit hotter than I like, so next time I know what to do.

My tummy's a bit ufda right this second, but it really did taste good. And it wasn't so much work that I won't do it again.

Commit any culinary triumphs lately? (huskiebear and jss1113, we know you have, so if you'd be so kind as to share your Iron Chef LJ techniques...?)

Driftglass hammers the shit out of the notion of "centrism":

"If Christ is not Risen... then our preaching is in vain."

I have always thought that this admonition by Paul to the Christ community of Corinth (1 Cor 15:15) was one of the most brilliant and starkly honest moments in the New Testament. It is not the interpretation of Christianity to which I subscribe (like Jefferson, I prefer my Jebus without a side order of miracles) but I admire its magnificent simplicity: Paul acting as Attorney for the Defense, reducing the totality of Christian doctrine as he understood it to a single hypothetical syllogism --

1. If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not risen.
2. 2. And if Christ has not risen, then everything we believe is a nonsense.

[...]

Speaking for every Liberal in America, it has long since gone well beyond annoying and bizarre that, year after year, we have to repeat and re-prove this same point to the same, wingnut-doting Villagers over and over again.

We now fully and finally understand that it doesn't matter.

We know that Newt Fucking Gingrich -- one of the hands-down, all-time Kings of Bile and the Politics of Personal Destruction -- will continue to be welcomed onto the Mouse Circus forever, where he will continue to say things like "You can’t build on bitterness!" without being laughed into the street.

[...]

Because we know that, in the end, reflexively loathing Liberals for being right and excusing the grotesque failures of Conservatives to create a wholly false "Sensible Center" will always be to Villagers what the Risen Christ was to Paul: the central pillar of their theology, without which their entire world would fall apart.

(h/t jblaque)

ETA: Apparently some of you think I, or the author of this article, are attacking Christianity. No no no no no. He used the "If Christ is not risen..." argument as a metaphor, to compare it with how the Villagers -- the politicians, punditry, and media -- cling to the notion of a political "center" that is somehow perfect and desirable (and toward which liberal/progressives must move to accommodate the Right). What he's saying is, exactly as with risen Christ (and please please note that it is being used as a metaphor here), philosophically the Villagers have to have a "center", because if they don't then they might have to actually examine the idea that they have been wrong about pretty much everything. They can't do that, ergo a "center".

I caught up with The Waters of Mars, and just finished watching The End of Time. Pretty darn cool stuff all around. Excellent character writing, with acting to match.

But I am very worried about the New Guy.

Thoughts?

Unabashed plug: Torchlight, an action RPG by Runic Games, which includes some of the Diablo II team. Freakin' gorgeous, freakin' addictive, moddable, relatively small download and hard-drive footprint, and, oh yeah, on sale for half-price ($9.95) until the 4th. (If you get it after, it's still worth the $20.) If you love the Diablo style of game, seriously, check this one out. And, if you've never played that kind of clickfest, give this one a try -- the demo gives you two hours of play free.

Any good entry-to-mid-level computer games we need to know about?

Happy New Year to us all. Here's hoping we're on an upward trend (or, as a commenter at Eschaton put it, may this be the year the pendulum picks up momentum on a leftward swing).

As a special gift for you all, here are the completely unexpurgated, unprocessed, raw-as-they-get MP3s of my Dec. 11 concert in Dayton, Part 1 and Part 2. I'll likely buff 'em up a bit later in the week, a little EQ and such, and then actually sell 'em, but for now, enjoy.

ETA: I hope you won't think it too gauche of me to point out that all of my downloads are still on sale. :)

Darth Cheney and the Republican Noise Machine in The Great War On Terror.

It's nearly a wrap on 2009, and, without getting into details, I think we can all agree it wasn't exactly what we hoped for. Here's hoping 2010 is at the least a bit easier for us all to get through.

There is a splendid party tonight, put on every year by dear friends I don't see enough of. There is Anne's invitation to come out and watch silly videos and then go tomorrow to see Sherlock Holmes. I will likely indulge in neither, as I'm getting a cold -- nothing dire, just a couple days of mildly sore throat and now stopped-up sinuses. Murfle. Fortunately, I have orange juice and roasted garlic soup and chips and salsa and Robitussin.

I no longer bother with New Year's Resolutions. They're so easy to break, and then you feel as if you've failed, and you get depressed and don't get back to 'em. I have a couple of goals: Herbert West and Girl Genius. And about a dozen more songs for Sounds Familiar. And the revised Big Book of Stupid Filk Tricks. Those would be really nice.

What are you doing tonight, if anything? And what goals do you have for the new year, if any?

Great sadness for us old-time indie wrestling fans. "Dr. Death", Steve Williams*, has lost his battle with throat cancer at the age of 49. Back in the Mid-South/UWF days, where so many great stars got their first real TV exposure, Dr. Death was roughly the Hulk Hogan character. A superb athlete (four-time All-American with Oklahoma) and a charismatic head-basher, Dr. Death was one of my favorites when I rediscovered TV wrestling in the mid-1980s. Here's video of his final match earlier this year, and here's lots of videos of his moves and matches. We'll miss you, Doc.


* There is always a touch of confusion when casual fans find out that "Stone Cold" Steve Austin's real name is Steve Williams. This ain't the same guy.

It's all Luke's fault.

All of the downloads are on sale until the end of New Year's Weekend. Albums six bucks, live shows $1.99 and $2.99.