Moms from Hell

For some of you, this is the end of the work week.  For me, it's just another day off.  

I ended up going to work late yesterday because my Christmas gift to myself was being delivered.  And I was told I needed to monitor my tardiness... Ouch.  I got to work late 3 times since July, (4 counting yesterday) and the great Orange Retailer I work for has policies.  No problem.  I mean, it's not like I was testing the system... well, maybe kind of.

A bit on fitness:  for years I've been under the belief that you should drink a protein shake prior to working out, or during the workout.  Protein helps build muscles, right?  Well, it turns out that if you're trying to burn fat calories, that's the wrong thing to do.  You end up burning the calories in the shake.  Those who drink the shake after the workout end up burning more fat calories.  If you think about it, it makes perfect sense.

So I made those Moroccan chicken meatballs.  Lots of spices: paprika, ginger, cinnamon, cumin, with a little brown sugar.

If you remember, I said I thought it odd they were using chicken, a mild meat, rather than lamb or goat.  Well, I was right.  They look delish, but all you taste are the spices and the yogurt, lemon, garlic sauce.

If you're really into spices, you might love them.  I thought they were rather meh.

And I saw that the Republicans up in New Hampshire voted for censorship of their school libraries.  As might be expected a group of conservative women, Moms for Liberty, Tweeted out they would pay a $500 bounty to those reporting teachers breaking this law.  Governor Sununu called their Tweet bullshit.  Does he really believe that's going to stop these hatemongers?  The Mom's of Liberty are desperately trying to take us into an authoritarian government which censors everything it doesn't like.  These are the kind of Moms that Josh Hawley should hate since their main goal is emasculate society.

India Censors disenting voices

I read this morning in the New York Times that Penguin Books of India had caved to censorship.  Evidently an 84 year old Hindu Conservative, Dina Nath Batra, had filed a lawsuit against Penguin charging a book they had published in 2011 attacked Hinduism with its vulgarity, among other things. I only know a little bit about Hinduism and have never read the book so I don't know if it's an attack on the religion or not.  I do suspect, however, that in his 84 year old brain Batra's little, grey cells are as pleased as little pigs in shit at their ability to control what the country can read.  If you take a look at those countries who do censor and those who do not you'll see there is quite a difference.  Those that do tend to be either communistic or run by dictators, those that don't tend to be democracies.  I suspect that if Batra had his way he would take India down the road towards dictatorship.  A comment of his in the Chicago Tribune went something like this "we believe in freedom of speech to a certain extent."  That's not a good sign.  I searched through Google images for a picture of Mr. Batra in which he didn't look like a prick.  Couldn't find one.  Nope.  In every single one his visage defined dourness.

A prick by any other name would still be a prick

Here is where it turns into old fool stupidity.  The legal decision was scanned and posted on the Internet so anybody who is even slightly curious now knows that Penguin has 6 months to stop selling the book in India.  So, if you have any interest in reading it's hateful, vulgarities in their fullness you have until July to buy it legally, at that point it needs to be off of the shelves.  Hey, Mr. Batra, have you any idea how long it takes to scan a book into a computer?  I hope he understands that banned books tend to become popular.  People want to read the nasty stuff.  And, once it is no longer available for purchase, copies will get passed around.  It's a good thing Mr. Batra doesn't have any real political clout, other wise we might see police squads bursting into homes searching for illegal volumes. Censorship always fails. The only way to truly enforce censorship is militarily and I don't think the Indian government would want to go that far.  Of course, I don't think it would bother Mr. Batra one bit as long as they were following his beliefs.