Toadfish Monastery

Panic ensues as the USFDA says that cloned meat, which we effectively can't make yet, is safe to eat.

AH! We're doomed!

(should we tell people that most of their specialty fruit and veggies are clones?)

If you don't believe in such things, don't be offended!

My friend Angie is in the hospital with growths in her throat. Good wishes wanted!

Okay. This is a rant on behalf of a local friend...

She called her (not local, Geico is the biggest local employer of insurance peeps-props to them) insurance company because a tree fell on her car during our freak snowstorm and she told the woman on the phone offsides that the claim on her car (about $1500 of glass and body) was nothing compared to her  house (which has an above ground pool and garage and back deck and balcony taken out by an oak.)

ANYWAYS, this woman she's on the phone with says that people should not live in places where "these things happen" and they deserve what they get...

Now, understand me, I agree that people should move out of flood basins, not live in California  unless they have earthquake proof houses, not live on the dry bluffs of Utah without a cement house, not live on Kansas prarie unless they have a tornado-proof  underground bunker, not live in Florida...well, at all, and that if you live in a hurricane zone without an escape plan and the rest, you're taking your own life in your hands...

BUT this event we had in Buffalo....

Okay, let me put it this way- SNOW TIRES ARE ILLEGAL TO HAVE ON YOUR CAR until this Monday....we don't get snow this early... Most people don't put them on until November, right before the Thanksgiving travel period. (WE pay the extra for damn good all seasons and have an emergency kit that includes snow supplies in our car year round.)

Decidious trees, with hundreds of thousands of years of evolution were pulled down by the weight of snow on their MOSTLY GREEN leaves (It was just the beginning of fall) If this was normal, they had THOUSANDS OF YEARS to adapt and failed!!!! (Evergreens were mostly fine!) Many of these trees were hundreds of years old, having lived through Buffalo's other two "disaster declarations" (1976-a HUGE ice storm, and 1977, a freak ground blizzard-where piles on snow on top of frozen Lake Erie and gale force winds turned Buffalo into a giant snow drift, some of the snow being 30ft high!!!!)

I am not a very strong person, but I can usually shovel. I could not lift a shovel full of snow. It acted like a sponge as it rained. My fat snow shovel holds about a two cubic feet of snow. That shovelful weighed AT LEAST 75 pounds- and my STEEL shovel weighs at least 25. (When you see the expensive snow shovels at home depot and think "what kind of people spend $40 on a shovel" it is US. We know we will use it for years and spending $40 once is better than spending $15 a year every year!)

This was like the fricking New England hurricane of 1938 (The one that nearly killed Katherine Hepburn) or The Halloween Storm of 1991 (the one "The Perfect Storm" is about) ...we had no warning (the weather report said a CHANCE OF some wet snow in the rain...maybe...)

The National Weather Service does not use the term "perfect storm" lightly, and they used it to describe this event (they are calling it an "event" because it neither fits the description of a hurricane nor of a blizzard.)

This is probably properly termed a derecho, or more accurately a serial derecho....

If so, this is about as bloody late in the year as they come.

If anyone is watching the weather channel and worrying, we are OKAY. We have
power in our neighborhood, and we're o-kay.

Normally, 4 inches of snow would not be a problem, but it is 34 degrees and all
of our oaks and elms (Buffalo has 50 elm trees and is a source of dutch elm
resistant stock) and maples and apples still have ALL their leaves, so trees are
going down left and right and taking out cars and powerlines because the snow is
very sticky and very heavy (because it is above freezing.)

It's also coming with thunder and lightning.

Check the weather channel for details!

"The alternative to the secular-fundamentalist death spiral is something called spiritual humility and sincere religious doubt."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1541466,00.html

My only, very small contention with this article is that "sincere religious doubt" CAN include self-assurance about your relationship (or non-relationship) with the divine...when it includes the understanding that UPG (unverified/unverifiable personal gnosis) is ONLY enough to base decisions that don't exceed the realm of the personal. In otherwords, decisions you make about you, not others.

But that's a very tiny contention, and a semantic one, at that, to an otherwise awesome article. 

[make sure it's true!]

The strangest thing I read today was a typical Nigerian scam mail, only the person had changed the part where Mr. Nabungabunga was killed by rebels to Steve Irwin and a stingray.

But they mail was almost completely unchanged otherwise.... down to Mrs. Irwin encouraging me to send her my bank account number before the stingrays and the government of Australia hunted her down.

This is a sick, sad world.

Well, where are you, now?


I am in an uncomfortable chair in a laboratory in Buffalo, NY.
I am also in a state of mild bliss. How about you?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4538138

A bunch of UEWwies and I did essays for an internal list based on the above.
Since we all were UEWwies, the essays were damnably similar.

However, I suggest some [gasp] NEW CONTENT...

Howsabout some of us discuss what it is we believe, so that we can start being about "worldwide religious tolerance" and not about the Pastafarian Diaspora.

It can be a....gasp...project.