Cocktail of the Day

It may not technically be summer yet, but once Memorial Day weekend rolls around, it may as well be. What better way to inaugurate the season than with a nice, crisp, refreshing cocktail? Here's a simple recipe for just such a drink - a limoncello summer cocktail. Be sure to chill the limoncello first. Enjoy!

"Wild Asian Ass"

14 across, six letters. It's "onager." Why, what were you thinking?

Update: According to this site, "[t]he Asian wild ass is the most horselike of all the species of ass." Geez, poor onagers. It must suck to be the Ann Coulter of the animal kingdom. (Ka-ching!)

Update: How come no one has stated that looking up a word on the internet when trying to solve a crossword puzzle is, um, cheating?

Poem of the Day

Copyright law be damned: I love poetry and want to share some of my favorite poems on this little blog o' mine. Here, for my inaugural installment, I want to share my favorite poem by the great Polish poet, Nobel laureate, Cold Warrior (however reluctantly) and humanist - Czeslaw Milosz.

Veni Creator

Come, Holy Spirit,

bending or not bending the grasses,

appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame,

at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards or when snow

covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada.

I am only a man; I need visible signs.

I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction.

Many a time I asked, you know it well, that the statue in church

lift its hand, only once, just once, for me.

But I understand that signs must be human,

therefore call one man, anywhere on earth,

not me - after all I have some decency -

and allow me, when I look at him, to marvel at you.

Czeslaw Milosz, Berkeley, 1961

If This Doesn't Melt Your Heart....

A baby gets a cochlear implant and hears his mother's voice for the first time.

HT: Sullivan.

Great Moments in Douchebaggery

Watch this damn video.  Jerk. (Not you, dear reader - the guy in the video.)

Oh Dear

Photos from the Louisiana coast. Number 38 is particularly distressing.

Question: what happens if some malicious little nosepicker decides to light a match down there?

Let's Go Over This Again

On September 11, 2001, the United States was attacked by a bunch of radical, cave-dwelling knuckledraggers. The United States was not (note the emphasis, but what the hell, let's say it again - not) attacked by an entire friggin' religion. Are we clear on that?

It would seem not. A plan to build a fifteen-story mosque and Islamic community center two blocks from the World Trade Center site met with rancorous opposition before being approved by a Manhattan community board.

Kudos to the board members who resisted the bobblehead army before them.