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Balanced News Blog |
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Holiday Recipe: Our Gingerbread
Martini
We've gotten behind on our Wednesday Cocktails, but this one's good enough to make up for the lapse! Here's a scrumptious holiday cocktail that you won't want to miss:
Can you can get your hands on a batch of soft-baked gingerbread cookies? Here's a great recipe for them here if you want to do a cocktail & cookie duo from scratch:
Once you have a soft-baked gingerbread cookie, you can slice a small rectangle in between the ginger bread cookie's legs (cutting out the crotch essentially - which I will refrain from listing who I'd like to do that to since it's Thanksgiving). Then, if you slice it right, you can have the gingerbread man standing on the rim of your glass! |
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News
Roundup: Other News You Don't Want to Miss Charity: Donators of Warehouse Space in Virginia Can Help the Salvation Army this Holiday Source: The Virginian-Pilot Crime: Judge Makes Vick Put Aside Money for the Animals Source: The Smoking Gun Crime: Lynyrd Skynrd's Original Drummer Behind Bars for Child Sex Offense Source: TMZ Crime: LifeTime movie it isn't: Gymnastics Teacher Charged with Rape Source: Boston Globe Holiday: What Americans Are Doing This Thanksgiving Source: Voice of America News Science: Scientists Bypass Need for Embryo to Get Stem Cells! Source: New York Times War: Wounded Warriors Face Home-Front Battle with VA Source: MichaelMoore.com/CNN War: Retired US Army Iraq Commander: Bring Troops Home Within a Year Source: Raw Story World News: Pakistan's Supreme Court Upholds Ability for Musharraf's Re-Election Source: BBC World News: Chinese Stock Plunges to Lowest Since Mid-August Source: Wall Street Journal |
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Spending the Holiday
with...Friends?
As of the time of this blog (6:42 am, yawn), 43% of you told PopSugar you would want to spend Thanksgiving with Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox. How random is that? No, America is not celebrity-obsessed at all! The Jolie-Pitts were in at #2, with 38% of the vote. James Haven Voight, Angelina Jolie's look-alike brother, told US Weekly that "Angie's been saying she's going to cook a turkey...I'm going to have to see it to believe it." The Courier Journal reported that Pitt and Jolie took the family to Springfield, Missouri so the kids - Maddox, 6, Pax, 3, Zahara, 2, and Shiloh, 1, could spend time with the in-laws...the Pitts, that is. No clue as to what Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox are doing for the holiday, because they avoid the media like the plague. Which never stops the tabloids, who have rumors are flying that Aniston is visiting Brad Pitt's mother before Christmas. Maybe she'll show up today and they'll all make peace. |
When
PETA Goes Overboard: Don't Mess With the
Turkey!  Thursday, November 22nd, 2007
I like PETA's message, but boy, do they go overboard. "Go Cold Turkey," PETA says on their site GoVeg.com, "No, we're not talking about smoking - we're talking about the addiction to eating animal flesh. November is the perfect time to kick this nasty habit and go vegetarian!" This Thanksgiving, they have a "Go Cold Turkey" campaign that is definitely gruesome to watch - but strangely, in their page about Rob Zombie hosting PETA's "Holiday Hotline," there is almost humor. Well, at least to me. "Calling Butterball's Turkey Talk Line and listening to tips about how to boil, broil, roast and toast the bodies of gentle, smart, and social birds sounds more like the plot of an upcoming horror film than cooking." Wait...yeah, no it doesn't. "So PETA - not willing to sit back and let this be the only option for callers this holiday season - teamed up with musician and horror-movie legend Rob Zombie to record PETA's 2007 Holiday Hotline. "Zombie, who is best known for hugely popular horror masterpieces like The Devil's Rejects, stopped eating our feathered friends years ago. While Zombie doesn't have a problem with people getting hacked to bits on the big screen, when it comes to the way animals are treated in real life, it's a different story entirely." The article continues here...I would not recommend pressing play on the video on that page if you have eaten turkey today (or even if you haven't, really). Another thing that's ticked me off about PETA as of late? They are supporting the bans against pit bulls in "an effort to crack down on dogfighting and prevent attacks by pit bulls." Though they state that they "support legislation that bans the breeding of pit bulls just as we support any spay/neuter legislation as the most effective way to combat the tragic companion animal overpopulation problem," pit bull breeders are not the only ones affected by pit bull bans - entire cities are told by lawmakers that they cannot have a pet pit bull at all, which makes you wonder if PETA wants to eliminate the domesticated animal altogether. |
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Mortars Hit Baghdad's Green
Zone
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least two mortar bombs landed inside Baghdad's Green Zone on Thursday, Iraqi police said, sending thick smoke rising from the centre of the heavily fortified compound. A Reuters witness said he could see one person who appeared to have been killed in the attack hanging from a damaged minibus. He said he heard up to six explosions. Police and U.S. military officials had no information on any casualties in the sprawling zone, which houses the U.S. and British embassies, the Iraqi parliament and many government ministries. Attacks on the zone using mortars and rockets were almost a daily occurrence earlier this year but the number of attacks has fallen dramatically with sharp drops in overall violence in Baghdad and other areas over the past few months. (Reporting by Wisam Mohammed; Editing by Paul Tait)
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Dennis
Quaid's Twins Suffer "Preventable" Medical
Error
When you read this article, don't be inspired to be sue-happy, people, because that just makes the problem worse. Dennis Quaid's newborn twins, two weeks old, are still recovering in a Los Angeles Hospital today after they were accidentally given a massive overdose of a blood-thinning drug by hospital staff on Sunday. They were at one of the best hospitals in the U.S., Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, who apologized yesterday for a "preventable error" that resulted in Quaid's new boy and girl and another unidentified child 10,000 units of Heparin (an anti-coagulant) instead of the standard 10 units for new life. The Chief Medical Officer at Cedars' Sinai, Michael L. Langberg, MD, released a statement, that said, in part: "I want to extend my deepest apologies to the families who were affected by this situation, and we will continue to work with them on any concerns or questions they may have. This was a preventable error, involving a failure to follow our standard policies and procedures, and there is no excuse for that to occur at Cedars-Sinai. Although it appears at this point that there was no harm to any patient, we take this situation very seriously. We are conducting a comprehensive investigation, cooperating fully with the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services and will take all necessary steps to ensure that this never happens here again." Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace Quaid were born through a surrogate mother on November 8th. Dennis Quaid and his wife, Kimberley Buffington, married in 2004 after Quaid and Meg Ryan's marriage ended. Their publicist said they "appreciate everyone's thoughts and prayers, and hope they can maintain their privacy during this difficult time." Everyone makes mistakes...but I think it's safe to say that if the person who did that is still in medical school, they need to pursue a new career path. Regardless, glad everyone's okay - the Quaids have a lot to be thankful for this holiday! Aw, a boy and a girl, how precious! |
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Larry
King Gets Walked Out On
Anyways, the creepy, creepy, triple-creepy plastic surgeon, Dr. Jan Adams, who operated on Kanye West's late mother, Donda West, appeared on CNN's Larry King Live. Sort of. He actually showed up to get his face on camera, and then immediately left. Which I completely don't understand because he looks like the end result of an illegal liposuction "pumping party" (come on, tell me you haven't seen those people on trial on Court TV). Here's CNN's article on the strange appearance and video of Larry King being miffed about how he got walked out on. "I have had fires in the studio. I have had people fight. I have had people hit each other on the set...punch each other." But he's never had someone show up just to walk off the set. Dude, Larry, everything's not always about you. He obviously is a very distrubed individual that is trying to attain some sort of allusive celebrity in his crazy mind where he's not a criminal. |
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Computer Geek Stumped by Form
Spam
Anyone fluent in ASP - I beg of you! I am so tired of form spam. May whoever invented the form spam bot be eternally spammed in hell. I don't even see the purpose - I don't know one person who would click on the idiotic crap we receive from form spammers: our "Submit Topic" form is getting nonstop e-mails with a bunch of hyperlinks for Iranian teens, Dildo Monsters, and Eli Manning. It's a waste of time, and I don't even open them anymore, but that means anyone who didn't fill out the Name field on the form, their messages also get deleted without being read. So, anyone who knows ASP and/or HTML and wants to assist, please contact me! I will post any responses and link back to your site if you like. Spam is such an awful problem that comes with the advances of technology. For everyone writing programs against it, there is someone writing programs for it. And for every article or forum post someone makes to solve a problem, a new problem is out, making it much more difficult to find an up-to-date solution. It's such a waste of time when there are so many other commendable - even historical - things we could be doing with the internet. If there is a be-all, end-all answer, that would definitely be news-worthy! And
if you can solve my spam issue, I'll send you any item from our giftshop for free. Here's my problem. I am using a very basic contact form. The HTML looks like:
I am using a validate.js javascript file (in lieu of a CAPTCHA) to prevent a user from submitting the form without correctly answering the question, "What color is an orange?" It works in some cases for non-human spammers, but believe you me, spam still comes through. I have a server-side form called gdform.asp that is the action script form my hosting company uses, but I am able to modify it. It looks like this. In my spam, the Name and E-mail Address fields are often (but not always) left blank, and the spambot uses the TEXTAREA field to put descriptions and links to sites - and often with missplaced A HREF tags. Thanks for any ideas! -A Stumped Computer Geek in 2007 |
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Our Favorite Song of the Day
Alicia Keys - No One Artist: Alicia Keys Album: As I Am Girl's got pipes. For Darko. |
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Automatically generated for your viewing pleasure 24/7. |
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3 More Reasons I'm
Thankful
I have the cutest widdle puddy tats. |
All images & content Copyright 2007
ConnieTalk.com
Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims seem to go
together, just like Christmas and Santa Claus--but the truth is, the
Pilgrims never held an autumnal Thanksgiving feast. Before you cancel
the turkey, take a look at the origin of that particular myth. In some
ways, the truth is even more intriguing.
"It was as crazy a night as you can imagine," Larry
King said yesterday. "I have seen it all now." Cool, does that
mean he'll retire now? I mean give yourself a break, Larry.
You had a great career for a while, but somewhere around the Britney and
Paris interviews, we gave up on you.
