From a family member who shall remain nameless (unless he wants credit, which I would gladly give):

Ah Christmas,

A time to wander blindly into the house of an angry, vengeful god who will fill us with the spirit of righteousness and vengeance for any whose doctrines contradict our own. The best part is never being wrong and treating others as inferior. What could be wrong with an institution that has roots nourished in the blood of heathens, infidels and homos?

As we consume the wealth taken from the less deserving and delivered rightly to our tables, let us not forget to cast severe judgement on any who disagree.

Let us not forget the lost art of smiting and in this time of giving, delivering the wrath so badly needed today.

Truly it is a magical time.

Merry Christmas

and a very

Happy New Year

What he said.

Another beautiful morning in the valley

A nice crisp morning in the valley today.

You don’t need to be in any particular state of mind to enjoy this variation on the classic dream bar (chocolate chip oatmeal coconut cookie bars).

I only had about a third of the oats I needed to make the classic, so I subbed what I had on hand: multi-grain oat bran breakfast cereal flakes.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup softened butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 1/12 cups multi-grain oat bran flakes, or some other hearty flake cereal (crushed if you are hand mixing, whole if using a strong mixer)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup shredded coconut

Method:

Cream butter, sugars, and vanilla. Mix in eggs. Mix flour, oats, cereal, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl, then gradually mix into wet ingredients. Stir in chocolate and coconut, reserving a small amount of coconut for topping. Spread dough into a lightly greased 9×13 baking pan. Sprinkle remaining coconut on top. Bake 30-35 minutes. Coconut on top will be golden brown when done.

A little behind here, but here’s what the front door of Chez Wacky looked on Halloween. Before all the lights were up and pumpkins carved, little Miss Missy intimated that it was kind of a half-cussed attempt at decor. When all was said and done, I think she agreed it was a worthy effort.

moon keepaway

Originally uploaded by Steve Rawley

Helping the moon rise on a fine Autumn eve.

Geo. W. Bush and Henry Paulson

If you know me, or if you’ve read this blog from time to time, you’ve got some inkling what I think of Merritt Paulson, ultra-rich scion of former Goldman Sachs CEO and Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. (If you don’t know me, and don’t want to follow the links, here’s what I think: he’s a spoiled rich kid playing sports team owner and an annoying little twit.)

After a bizarre series of attempted deals with the Mayor of Portland, Sam Adams, and the shadow mayor, Portland Commissioner Randy Leonard — who tried like hell to figure out a way to build the Paulsons two stadiums on the public dime, but ran into tenatious opposition from veterans, architects, urban planners, neighborhood activists and historic preservationists — poor wittle Merrit only got one stadium and had to sell his wittle baseball team for lack of a suitable playground.

(His daddy is a partner in his minor league sports empire, by the way, so it’s a wonder he wouldn’t put up more cash to build a stadium if it’s such a sure fire financial win to invest in sports stadiums as is frequently claimed. But I digress….)

The excavators are already busy at PGE Park (nee Civic Stadium; the Paulsons get the dough on the naming deal), ripping out part of the $38.5 million renovations done in 2001. These renovations, that Portland is still paying off, were done to make it a better venue for baseball, including a retro, manually-operated scoreboard. It’s a long story. Cutting to the chase: they’re re-renovating nine years later as a soccer-specific venue, to the exclusion of baseball.

Today comes the news that the Portland Beavers have been sold as expected, and are officially moving to Escondido, California.

I generally avoid the crappy comments section at OregonLive, the crappy Web partner of our crappy daily The Oregonian, but today I couldn’t resist jumping in to the Soccer v. Baseball war when somebody posted an invitation to a “Timbers Army/Sam Adams joke contest.” Here’s my entry, edited here in a vain attempt to punch it up a little:

A mayor, a councilman and a billionaire walk into a bar. A couple sleepy customers are watching a baseball game on the screen behind the bar. Bartender says, what’ll it be, boys? Mayor says, whatever my friend here wants, it’s on the house. Bartender says, no way pal, hit the road.

Next thing you know, a bunch of drunken, middle-aged, white man-children wearing scarves are flooding through the front door, knocking over tables and singing vulgar songs…. pretty soon the sleepy baseball fans are out on their ears, there’s a soccer game on the TV, the billionaire’s behind the bar with his hands in the till and the bartender’s getting beat up by the councilman.

The mayor takes out his phone and tweets: “This is a great day for Portland. #timbersarmy #mls”

Yeah. It’s a joke, but it’s not very funny.

Do me better. What’s your Portland/Sam Adams/Merritt Paulson/Randy Leonard/Timbers Army/Beavers joke?

My new beer league team put me on forward… on right wing to be precise.

So far it’s working out pretty good. I’ve got two goals in two games, which is 25% of all the goals we’ve scored. We lost both games, but I think I can get used to playing up front. (Playing defense, I got zero goals in about 25 games.)

Don’t worry, though, I still shoot left.

I’m going to start calling our house Nutria-henge. On the Autumnal Equinox, the sun rose directly over the peak of Mt. Hood. Ten days later, it’s slipping south.