You can say that again

In the wake of the fake controversy that Karl Rove has stirred up over a Spanish-langauge version of the Star-Spangled Banner, the White House is now insisting that Bush really doesn't speak Spanish well at all (I am shocked!).

To put the issue in context, Bush jumped on the anti-immigrant bandwagon by stating that the anthem should only be sung in English. That's understandable; it's just so easy to appeal to racism in America. I think of the anti-immigrant issue as the new gay marriage, although I hope it's less successful.

Anyway, soon after Bush announced his grand vision of Linguistic Purity, a number of reports surfaced that he himself had sung the national anthem in Spanish while campaigning in Hispanic areas in 2000 and 2004. The White House instantly leaped into action, insisting that Bush's command of Spanish was "not bueno".

I was reading an article about it, and my attention was caught:

As the Spanish wire service Agencia EFE has noted, Mr. Bush speaks the language poorly 'but with great confidence.'

"Poorly but with great confidence"...that pretty much describes his approach to everything, doesn't it?

You can say that again

In the wake of the fake controversy that Karl Rove has stirred up over a Spanish-langauge version of the Star-Spangled Banner, the White House is now insisting that Bush really doesn't speak Spanish well at all (I am shocked!).

To put the issue in context, Bush jumped on the anti-immigrant bandwagon by stating that the anthem should only be sung in English. That's understandable; it's just so easy to appeal to racism in America. I think of the anti-immigrant issue as the new gay marriage, although I hope it's less successful.

Anyway, soon after Bush announced his grand vision of Linguistic Purity, a number of reports surfaced that he himself had sung the national anthem in Spanish while campaigning in Hispanic areas in 2000 and 2004. The White House instantly leaped into action, insisting that Bush's command of Spanish was "not bueno".

I was reading an article about it, and my attention was caught:

As the Spanish wire service Agencia EFE has noted, Mr. Bush speaks the language poorly 'but with great confidence.'

"Poorly but with great confidence"...that pretty much describes his approach to everything, doesn't it?

Meat

Just a note for myself, more than anything else:

As some of you might know, I've been studying the art of grilling for about twenty years now. I won't bore everyone with lots of details, but yesterday I grilled some hamburgers. I've been using 80% lean ground round or ground beef lately, but yesterday at Teri's request I used an 87% grind of ground sirloin - very fresh.

The burgers came out really well; a definite improvement over the usual. I'll have to remember that, although of course ground sirloin is more expensive than ground round and ground beef. And of course I wouldn't want to go leaner than 87%; anything leaner would end up too dry.

Sebastian went crazy for it all; not only did he finish off his own dinner, he took some of Teri's and finished off mine, to boot.

Later, I took a piece of bread and - okay, this is going to be hard to explain. I don't know if this is something everyone does, or just my family. But when we have roast beef or something, we take pieces of bread and soak them in the juice from the roast. The result is incredibly delicious, and we call it "sweeps" - perhaps because you sweep the bread across the pan, I don't know.

After I cooked the burgers there was a lot of juice left in the platter (of course the platter had NOT been touched by raw meat; I use separate platters for cooked and raw meat, of course).

So I took half a hamburger bun and made sweeps for Sebastian. He loved it, and asked for more. But there was no meat juice left (and why does the phrase "meat juice" sound so disgusting? Sometimes I think I'll end up as a vegetarian in my old age), so I explained to him that sweeps were something that you could only have a little bit of, once in a while. For some reason that explanation seemed to make sense to him.

Meat

Just a note for myself, more than anything else:

As some of you might know, I've been studying the art of grilling for about twenty years now. I won't bore everyone with lots of details, but yesterday I grilled some hamburgers. I've been using 80% lean ground round or ground beef lately, but yesterday at Teri's request I used an 87% grind of ground sirloin - very fresh.

The burgers came out really well; a definite improvement over the usual. I'll have to remember that, although of course ground sirloin is more expensive than ground round and ground beef. And of course I wouldn't want to go leaner than 87%; anything leaner would end up too dry.

Sebastian went crazy for it all; not only did he finish off his own dinner, he took some of Teri's and finished off mine, to boot.

Later, I took a piece of bread and - okay, this is going to be hard to explain. I don't know if this is something everyone does, or just my family. But when we have roast beef or something, we take pieces of bread and soak them in the juice from the roast. The result is incredibly delicious, and we call it "sweeps" - perhaps because you sweep the bread across the pan, I don't know.

After I cooked the burgers there was a lot of juice left in the platter (of course the platter had NOT been touched by raw meat; I use separate platters for cooked and raw meat, of course).

So I took half a hamburger bun and made sweeps for Sebastian. He loved it, and asked for more. But there was no meat juice left (and why does the phrase "meat juice" sound so disgusting? Sometimes I think I'll end up as a vegetarian in my old age), so I explained to him that sweeps were something that you could only have a little bit of, once in a while. For some reason that explanation seemed to make sense to him.