Time (or lack of), Pictures & Links

I severely overbooked myself between late October and this Wednesday. Reading and Saucywriting - I still have time for other stuff (160 words about potatoes here), but posts for this blog are suffering and books aren't reading themselves. Well those two and time in the kitchen. I still haven't broken down and been to a restaurant but my freezer is pretty emptied out and my sandwich consumption somehow spiked over the last 6 weeks. (See 2011 word cloud - generated from 150+ meals of the 800 or so I have had this year).

Year of the Sandwich

I took a web design class this semester. If you ever want to feel like a failure, try taking and not understanding a freshman level class at a Community College and struggling. I learned though. Mechanics and how complicated a good site is.

I finished Wednesday at 2. (I'll show the work in the future.) Wednesday night I saw The Descendants - Good movie, not sure about the voiceover but it was certainly a holiday feel bad movie if there ever was one - I should have picked something with explosions. I was the only one laughing at how awful Clooney's tween and teen were to his character - It's always funnier when they aren't yours. Yesterday morning, I did nothing except break my 4th French Press of the year. Today I did some dishes and laid the ground work for pizza night Sunday and made a batch of meatballs

So no time to write today. Instead a good article from Slate about butter, affluence and availability. This article along with Matt Taibbi's Griftopia - especially the chapter on how commodities can be traded by the people who help grow them - should help one comprehend the massive omnibus federal spending package called the farm bill - up for renewal in 2012. If you like or need visuals to help flesh out a story Crazy wife farm blog has a wonderful powerpoint here. I like this slide the best. 

With holidays and time with the family, maybe even people who don't share the same political beliefs as you, keep in mind there is one thing everyone can agree on - corruption, giveaways and favoritism at a government level. Find common ground by hating on the farm bill. Then start dropping facts, and structure the conversation about the role of government. Sure it's high risk - so much can go wrong - but it is also high reward. Isn't doing something better than getting frustrated by someone spouting the factually curious FOX-Limbaugh-Newsmax talking points? Although every time one of Tim Tebow's ugly ass end over end passes gets caught - I do rethink my relationship with Jesus.

More and better next week.