Category Archives: No One Has Time for This

Five of the many ways a smoothie can go wrong

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If you make smoothies regularly, you know that there are many, many ways they can go wrong. But until the subject came up in a conversation with some friends last weekend, I didn’t realize that this is actually something that happens to everyone.

I find that to be simultaneously comforting and dispiriting.

Now, as a public service, I have documented here a few of the many ways that I have had smoothies go wrong in the hope that others who may be new to smoothie preparation can be spared the anguish and trauma of a disappointing smoothie.

I have personally experienced all five of these bungled smoothies as well as other smoothie failures too numerous to list here. And as I discovered last weekend, if you make smoothies you have probably had most of these happen to you as well.

But if I can help to prevent even a single future smoothie catastrophe, I feel that I have no choice but to speak out on this issue about which we have all been silent for too long.

And now: Five of the Many Ways a Smoothie Can Go Wrong.

5. You forgot you were out of bananas and didn’t remember until everything else was already in the blender and now you’re stuck with an unpleasantly textured not-smoothie.

4. You accidentally tip the bottle of vanilla extract a little too far when you go to add a drop for subtlety and ruin $12 worth of mangoes, peaches, and cantaloupe that you just spent 45 minutes cutting up.

3. You put kale in it.

2. One word: FLAX.

1. Your blender is suddenly and without warning host to a malevolent poltergeist that takes over the controls, switching across settings — now blend, now pulse, now liquefy, now snow (yes, that is really a setting), now some high-speed screechy setting that has a name only Satan himself dares to utter — in a pattern that appears random but is really a code that is trying to tell you to GET OUT OF THE HOUSE NOW but all you can do is stand there transfixed, a little part of you still kind of half-heartedly hoping it breaks up that bit of frozen banana at the bottom but also a little worried that you might be whisked away by evil spirits any second, and then there’s a loud pop and a blue flash and your dogs have long since fled the kitchen and your blender is totally dead and smoking a little and the outlet it was plugged into is also dead and you have to try to finish mixing your smoothie with a spoon which DOESN’T WORK although it still turns out better than the one with the kale.

Hard-Working Americans Like You

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It’s been an amusing week around chez Alevei, especially since Mr. Alevei has somehow ended up on the mailing list for the Republican National Committee, perhaps thanks to a family member or two who still think his politics may be worth trying to salvage. Most exciting of all, he is now therefore eligible to participate in the RNC 2012 Presidential Issues Survey, which has just arrived in the mail, along with a nice note From the Desk of Mitt Romney, cheerily dated “Monday Morning,” that opens with the salutation, “Dear Fellow Republican.” Because the envelope is marked “urgent,” Mr. Alevei of course felt that he had no choice but to give it his immediate attention.

Gov. Romney writes that he and his “friends at the Republican National Committee” are interested in finding out “what hard-working Americans” like Mr. Alevei “want this campaign to be about.” In addition to his “honest, thoughtful answers” to the survey questions, which “will help guide our blueprint to victory” (yes, that is really what it says, guide our blueprint), naturally Gov. Romney “would appreciate” Mr. Alevei’s “financial support as well.”

Also tucked into the envelope is a longer letter from RNC chair (and “obvious anagram”¹) Reince Priebus filled with the usual underlining of important points. You know, like “Make no mistake: the very future of our nation will be determined by the outcome of the 2012 election,” and “Barack Obama is hoping his constant demagoguery, blustery partisan rhetoric, billion dollar war chest and hundreds of millions of dollars from his Big Union Bosses will buy him another term.² We cannot allow that to happen.” That kind of thing.

One thing both letters have in common is their insistence on how truly valuable Mr. Alevei’s thoughts and feelings “on the major issues of the day” really are to the RNC. As Mr. Priebus explains, “The experience you bring to the table is critical to our Party’s success.”

You see, Mr. Alevei has been “chosen to participate in this Survey,” writes Mr. Priebus, because of his “active political involvement and steadfast commitment to the Republican Party” in his “area.” And in his note, Gov. Romney identifies Mr. Alevei as “one of our country’s most active Republicans.”

All this has led me to wonder whether Mr. Alevei has been engaging in political activities about which I am somehow unaware. That seems unlikely, so I am left with the exciting possibility that a long-haired pro-choice civil libertarian who supports same-sex marriage and is married to a Jewish liberal feminist university professor who works for the state may actually be the RNC’s best hope for “active” and “steadfast” support for their idiotic Romney/Ryan ticket come November. (Yes, I do have a rich fantasy life, but alevei.)

 Notes:

1. The brilliant and hilarious Esquire political writer Charles Pierce came up with that one in this August 7 post.

2. I’ve said it before, more than once, actually, but these people are truly and utterly without shame.

“Legitimate rape,” really?

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OK, I really wasn’t prepared to have to deal with this level of stupidity so early in the week nor so soon after the multiple head explosions I experienced earlier today as a result of my looking into whether Mitt Romney might be a teensy bit of a hypocrite on the subject of crony capitalism.

But when a candidate for the U.S. Senate (who is also a six-term congressman in the House of Representatives) says

First of all, from what I understand from doctors, (pregnancy from rape) is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.

well, I can’t just look the other way, as much as I’d like to. But I will keep this one short. On the topic of Missouri Senate candidate and currently serving House Representative Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin (R-You’ve Got to Be Kidding Me. People Actually Elected This Horse’s Ass to National Office?), I will say only the following:

1. If nonconsensual sex did not result in pregnancy, there would be a hell of a lot fewer people on this planet right now than there actually are.

2. Many of the Republicans who are now scurrying to disavow Rep. Akin’s comments are some of the same people who have co-sponsored misogynistic bills right along with Missouri’s finest that indicate that they believe there is such a thing as non-forcible rape, the existence of which they felt should be codified into law. And they are also some of the same people who were poised to bankroll his Senate campaign. Do I really need to point out that in his SIXTH term in the House of Representatives, Akin is far from an unknown quantity, so they don’t get to pretend to be all surprised and shocked and everything and act like they are just now finding out that this guy is anyone other than exactly who they thought he was all along and knowingly supported until he had to go and say out loud what a lot of them are thinking, possibly blowing their chances of taking control of the Senate, which alevei.

3. The House Science Committee really flew up its own ass when it let Todd Akin be on it and therefore should probably be disbanded until such time as its membership can be limited to people with an actual clue, which while we’re at it should also be a prerequisite for serving in Congress to begin with.

4. This is why God doesn’t want you to go on the TV on Sundays, Rep. Akin.