Sunday, September 23, 2012

Jihad - It Seems Someone Out There Gets It - We Need To Save Civilized Mankind

An ad that has run for weeks in San Fransicko (where the media apparently considers vandals as artists), on buses, will soon also run in the New York City subway system. Read about it here. My guess is that, even though the courts have said it must run, it will either be banned by politicians or will result in violence, sooner or later, caused by fanatical Muslims in in the USA. In a way, although I do not want to see anyone injured by them, maybe people being injured again in the USA by Muslim fanatics would be the wake-up call that is needed to get people to realize that Islam, as it now stands and as is now practiced by hundreds of thousands if not millions of Muslim fanatics, is the enemy.

Yes, there may be moderate or non-violent Muslims out there but those are not the ones with whom I am concerned, I am concerned with the fanatics and there seems to be no shortage of them in the form of violent rioters, death dealing Jihadists, the ones who fulfill fatwas of death, the ones who kidnap then torture then behead people with different beliefs than their own, the ones so offended by a cartoon that they go berserk, the ones who kill people of other faiths routinely, the types that flew the planes on 9/11 and so forth. I think that they need to be converted to non-violent ways, post haste, but I am at a loss, as seems the rest of the world to be, as to how to accomplish that goal. I think though that such a change must come from within Islam itself but I do not see it coming any time soon. It needs to happen fast though, otherwise, I fear that the only other tenable solution may wind up being to be wipe them, the Muslim fanatics, off of the face of the earth to protect the rest of us.

All the best,
Glenn B

Decisions, Decisions - I Missed The LIHS Opening Meeting Today

I am a member of the Long Island Herpetological Society, have been for well over 20 years now. I joined up in the first or second year. Just as luck would have it, I was looking through the classified section of my local news paper and saw the LIHS ad for a meeting under the Pets section. I went to that meeting and have been going, as often as I can, ever since.

Well, maybe not quite as often as I can, I mean I could have gone to the opening meeting, today, for the 2012/2013 season but chose not to go. Normally I would not have missed it if I could have gone and I certainly could have gone today but chose to do something else. I got to thinking over the last couple of days about roasting/smoking something in my BBQ grill this weekend. For the past two days or so, I gave that a lot of thought and yesterday I bought a 5 3/4 pound boneless leg of lamb to that end. I have also been promising my wife, for the past couple of days that I would prepare it today. Had I thought of the LIHS, in that time, I would have waited until tomorrow to smoke the lamb, especially since the wife already had planned to roast 2 ducks today (which she did and they were ever so delicious). As my little gray cells had it, my muddled middle aged memory and little gray kicked in once again in forgetful mode and thoughts of the LIHS meeting eluded me on Friday, Saturday and up until almost precisely 1PM today, the start time of the meeting; which was also the time I checked my email and saw a reminder about the meeting. Damn, I had just fired up the grill, had the wood, hickory and cherry, soaked and was almost ready to throw on the lamb.

It was a tough decision for me to make and I mean that too. That because I have not seen the folks from the LIHS since June or July and I miss them, many of them good friends. Then there was the other side, the lamb would be part of a family dinner and we don't have enough of them. (Or so I had hoped it would be part of dinner tonight, it took until at least an hour after dinner started to get it to being what I hope is perfection, it is resting in the kitchen as I type.) I chose the family dinner thing. Had I not already had the meat sitting out of the fridge for about 15 to 20 minutes, and had I not already salted it, I would have put it back into, or left it in, the fridge and headed to the meeting getting there about a half hour to 45 minutes late.

As it was, I stayed home and smoked the lamb. My loss in one the one regard that the meeting is lost, I cannot go to the meeting tomorrow. I could have waited until then to smoke the lamb had my timing just been different by several minutes and as it is will probably wait until then to eat it regardless. Oh well, there will be the October LIHS meeting. I will have to make sure not to be working that day and set a reminder on my cell phone's calendar for the meeting date. I don't have many other interests that would get me to join  other societies to more enjoy those other pursuits, I truly enjoy the reptile and amphibian thing that much. I can tell you, I am more than a little perturbed with myself that I went shopping while hungry yesterday and sort of got a one track mind all set on smoking the lamb today. Since the lamb only was done well after dinner, I have not even tasted it yet . I think it would have tasted best shortly after coming off of the grill but things worked out the way they did and now I suppose I'll wait until tomorrow. Perhaps I would have just been better off waiting until tomorrow to smoke it in the first place.

Damn those aging little gray cells and my muddled middle aged memory. Oh well, decisions - decisions, you have to live with the ones you make and now I'll have to wait until next month for the next LIHS meeting.

All the best,
Glenn B