About My Blog.

Welcome! This is "Catatonic Digressions."
Most readers don't understand my blog's title. It's an old inside joke from a forum long gone. I was going to change it, but since it's been "confusing" for so long, I decided to leave it. Don't worry about what it means, the content of the blog is what matters...or not

Unfortunately, my blog isn't what I set out for it to be. A sick woman in Orleans, MA began stalking me in 2007 on Myspace. Since that time, this woman obsessed over me to the point of having the police come to her home and threaten to confiscate her laptop. She is a racist and anti-Semite.I could no longer blog freely, knowing this nutbag was just going to take the photos I'd post and put them on a child exploitation website.

This site is only up for the information it has that others might need to know about. That information is about "Seal Shepherd" aka Michael McDade, Kat McAboy aka Marilyn McAboy and Veronika Hompo, a self-proclaimed Nazi.


I'm a real person. I'm real and I don't pretend to be someone I'm not. After years of putting up with online abuse by manipulative, pathological liars, attention whores or narcissists, I've had it. Don't bother me with pathetic drama. I have no time for these types of people and their need to absorb others' time and attention.

This blog is no longer used. I've retired it for the most part unless something very important comes up.

Please, join Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and follow them on Twitter and Facebook.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Long Beach





LONG ISLAND DAILY PHOTO

from WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2009

long beach




Long Beach is actually the name of this town where you will find this beautiful scene. I didn't notice one person on this entire stretch of sand until I enlarged this photo. there looks like one is sitting in a beach chair all by themselves! the boardwalk was barely busy. I am sure the year round residents relish this time of year when they get their beach town back to themselves. it was so peaceful sitting on the bench yesterday, eating breakfast with a view of the ocean. the sunshine made the sand seem extra white. 
the cargo ships below are even more interesting if you click on the photo to enlarge. doesn't the water look like a precious jewel?






Reposted from LONG ISLAND DAILY PHOTO

Saturday, October 24, 2009

I Am Scared.


I Am Scared.


“Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.”
- Albert Schweitzer

"A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral."
- Leo Tolstoy

"You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson





[NO, I won't cook you fucking Porterhouses, motherfucker.]

Friday, October 23, 2009

No Insurance?



Confessions of a Psychotic Housewife: Free Flat Rate Shipping Kit

Confessions of a Psychotic Housewife: Free Flat Rate Shipping Kit

I kind of hesitated to post this one since it asks for a business name (you could write your blog name, or if you have an etsy/ebay name, use that), but you can receive a free flat rate box kit from the USPS. It contains 4 different boxes for shipping flat rate Priority Mail ONLY. It also comes with several different offers for online postage (most of which the average person doesn't need, unless they also run a business). I'm posting it since the holiday season is just around the corner, and who wants to run into the post office to pick up a box or two, just to find out they are out of the size you want?

If you didn't know, you can not only register to print your postage online - where they give you a small discount for doing so, usually about 50 cents or so on the postage cost! - but you can also schedule a package pick up by your mail carrier so you don't even have to visit the post office. You don't have to have a business to take advantage of either of those!

Hurry though, because this offer is only good until October 31st!

Thursday, October 22, 2009

…and it's Not Even Remotely Funny.


.suǝddɐɥ sıɥʇ uǝɥʇ puɐ 'ʎɐʞo ǝq oʇ buıob sı buıɥʇʎɹǝʌǝ ʞuıɥʇ noʎ ʎɐp ǝuo

Film on the Dolphin Hunt Stirs Outrage in Japan — NYT




Film on the Dolphin Hunt Stirs Outrage in Japan



Published: October 22, 2009

TOKYO — For years, dolphin hunts off the seaside town of Taiji, which turn coastal waters red with blood each winter, have drawn the ire of Western activists. But few among the Japanese public seemed to care, or even know, about the slaughter.

Junji Kurokawa/Associated Press
A worker delivered boxes of ice cream behind a signboard posted by Taiji Fishery Cooperative at a port in Taiji, western Japan in September.

Oceanic Preservation Society
Louie Psihoyos, director of the film "The Cove," and Charles Hambleton, assistant director in the cliffs above the dolphin cove in Taiji.


That could change with the first public screenings here of “The Cove,” an American documentary that used hidden cameras to film Taiji’s annual dolphin hunts. On Wednesday, Japanese moviegoers got their first glimpse of it at the Tokyo International Film Festival, held here this week.
Taiji is not the only community that hunts dolphins, thousands of which are killed across the world either by intent or by becoming ensnared in fishermen’s nets. But Taiji’s fishermen are notorious drive hunters, banging on metal poles to herd panicked dolphins into a cove, then spearing them to death in what protesters describe as a gory bloodbath.
Japan killed about 13,000 dolphins in coastal waters in 2007, according to the fisheries agency, of which about 1,750 were captured in Taiji. Japan also hunts whales by using a loophole in the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling that allows whales to be killed for research, though the catch from its research fleet ends up in Japanese supermarkets.
“I was outraged. The footage of the sea turning bloody red was especially shocking,” said Yukiko Ishizawa, 18, a college student in Tokyo who saw the film on Wednesday.
“I’d seen the meat sold on the market, but had no idea Japan was a big dolphin-hunting nation,” said Taro Oguchi, 29, an office worker. “Whether or not Japan should stop is one thing,” he said. “But we should at least be aware these hunts take place.”
Despite the film’s enthusiastic reception at the festival — a round of applause broke out at the end of the film — it is unclear whether it will spark a wider public debate. Whale and dolphin hunting are considered an important part of Japan’s traditional livelihood and culinary culture, a practice to be defended against foreign interference. (Even though only a minority of Japanese eat whale meat, and evenfewer eat dolphin.)
There is also a strong taboo in the Japanese news media against any criticism of the country’s farmers and fishermen, often depicted as heroic defenders of a way of life that is fast disappearing. Coverage of the film has been sparse, and its producers have yet to find a distributor willing to put it on wider release.
The Tokyo Film Festival initially rejected “The Cove” as too controversial, but reversed its decision at the last minute after lobbying from Hollywood heavyweights like Ben Stiller, who has taken a personal interest in it. The festival, however, screened a disclaimer stating it had nothing to do with the film’s production.
“The feeling here is that the world needs to respect cultural differences,” said Testsu Sato, a professor in environmental management at Nagano University. “Why should there even be a debate on this issue?”
The fishing cooperative at Taiji had demanded that the festival drop “The Cove” from its program, accusing producers of trespassing on private property to film footage and of making false assertions. The town has hired a lawyer and was preparing to take legal action, an official said Wednesday. The lawyer, Shozaburo Ishida, did not return repeated requests for comment.
Meanwhile, the dolphin hunts will continue as planned through the season that runs from September through February, Japan’s fisheries agency said Wednesday. At their first hunt in September, Taiji fishermen captured 10 bottle-nosed dolphins out of a pod of about 100 to ship live to aquariums, while about 50 pilot whales were killed and sent to market.
Taiji’s mayor, Kazutaka Sangen, has advised fishermen to carve up whales and dolphins in indoor facilities so as not to provoke activists further, according to the newspaper Yomiuri.
Still, the film’s makers called Wednesday’s screening a coup, and a first step toward raising awareness of the hunts among the Japanese public. The crew, which included a pair of free divers and a “clandestine operations” organizer, used fake rocks to hide the cameras and microphones off Taiji’s coast.
“The secret is out,” the director, Louie Psihoyos, said Wednesday. “The reaction was amazing. People came up to me to ask how they could help.”
Mr. Psihoyos has said that he would give Taiji the profits from any further screenings in Japan if it ends the hunts and switches to whale-watching or other businesses.
The switch will not be easy in Taiji, where dolphin meat accounts for a third of the town’s roughly $3 million annual fishing industry. The people of Taiji have hunted coastal whales for 400 years, according to the local whaling museum, and the town’s men serve as harpooners and sailors aboard Japan’s whaling fleet. Dolphin meat is a local delicacy, served raw as sashimi or boiled with soy sauce.
In recent years, however, the town has become increasingly divided on dolphin hunting. Laboratory tests have shown high levels of mercury in the flesh of dolphins and pilot whales that were caught and sold in Taiji, prompting some local markets to remove them from their shelves.
But even those findings have not been widely reported in the national media. Many in the film audience were shocked to learn about high mercury readings in dolphin meat.
“I’m never going to eat dolphin again now that I know about the pollution,” said Mutsuko Otake, 55, a Tokyo homemaker. “But I was most shocked to find out that Japan has been getting a bad name, without us knowing about it,” she added.

Yasuko Kamiizumi and Ayasa Aizawa contributed reporting.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Sea Shepherd adds speed to counter Japanese whalers | Brand X | Los Angeles Times

Sea Shepherd adds speed to counter Japanese whalers | Brand X | Los Angeles Times

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Sea Shepherd adds speed to counter Japanese whalers

10:20 AM PT, Oct 21 2009
Ady gillDSC_0782

The Animal Planet program “Whale Wars” is already one of the more controversial shows on television, chronicling the travails of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society as it pits its motley volunteer navy against Japanese whalers hunting in the iceberg-strewn Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary in the Antarctic Ocean.
But Season 3 of the show is about to get even more interesting. At a Sea Shepherd fundraiser on Oct. 17, the society unveiled its new boat, the frankly menacing-looking tri-hull speedster formerly known as Earthracer. The spidery craft has been renamed the Ady Gil in tribute to the Hollywood businessman who helped acquire the vessel and cut the society a million-dollar check. It has been painted black and festooned with the skull-and-crossbones, and will join the Sea Shepherd vessel Steve Irwin when the Antarctic campaign begins anew in December.
The Ady Gil can attain speeds of 50 knots and currently holds a world speed record for circumnavigating the Earth in 60 days.
“Now we can intercept those harpoon boats,” Watson told a crowd gathered at the Hollywood Hills home of philanthropist James Costa. “We’ve already cut their [whaling] quota to 50%, and this year we’re going to get to 80%.”
For six years, Sea Shepherd has routinely harassed the factory vessel Nisshin Maru and other Japanese vessels engaged in whaling under a clause in an International Whaling Commission treaty that bans commercial whaling but allows for limited research whaling. Japan is a signatory to the treaty but Sea Shepherd claims Japan's whaling is not for research but rather commercial in nature and is therefore illegal. As much as the Sea Shepherd activists have irritated the Japanese vessels, however, they never had a vessel fast enough to keep up with Japanese harpoon boats. Until now.
“We’re speaking the language that the Japanese whaler understands: profit and loss,” Watson said. “For the last few years, they’ve made no money. Give us one more year and we can bankrupt them.”
The Japanese Fisheries Agency, which monitors the whaling, did not reply to phone and fax messages in Japan. However, its support of whaling is well-documented, best articulated by statements on its website such as: “Those members of the IWC who are opposed to the sustainable use of whale resources and who try to impose their views on the rest of the world are subverting the purpose of the treaty and have caused the IWC to become dysfunctional. Their position is contrary to scientific finding and the widely accepted principle of sustainable use.”
Said Costa, “When I went to Antarctica, I thought that this is a place where humans don’t belong. I am so grateful to Paul Watson and others who do something to get people the hell out of there.”
Actress and activist Daryl Hannah voiced the opinion of many at the gathering when she said, “Sea Shepherd is one of the few great environmental organizations around. They don’t spend their budgets talking and messaging and putting out calendars. They get out there and do the work and actually stop hunting and poaching and fishing. They put their bodies on the line.” Hannah worked 18 days on the Sea Shepherd ships last season in Antarctica.
A clearly excited Ady Gil said of Watson, “This man is like the Mother Teresa of the oceans.” He had the crowd laughing at his own story of transformation to animal rights activism, then said, “I have to tell you, this is a bad-ass ship. It’s a little rough inside, it needs some pimping.”
He then proceeded to lead a live auction to raise money for fuel and a few improvements to the ship.
In 2008, Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported that Japan had lowered the annual quote for minke whales from 945 to 750. The fleet continues to also hunt 50 endangered fin whales annually.
-- Dean Kuipers
Photo: Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society


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Purchase LUSH's Charity Pot hand and body cream and select Sea Shepherd as your choice to receive 100% of the retail price (minus taxes)





Sea Shepherd Onshore Volunteering

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Save A Gato - Trap / Neuter / Return... It Works — Make a Donation Today... Please!


Save A Gato - Trap / Neuter / Return... It Works

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Trap / Neuter / Return... It Works!

Old San Juan Cat TalesGet InformedMeet the people who make it possible

Old San Juan Cat Tales is a bilingual children book on how cats arrived in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico .It is told through their experiences .

The book is illustrated by a local artist Haydee Alvarado,cat lover and great supporter of our organization. All caracters are based on real cats found in the colony of the Paseo del Morro.......

Feral cats have a home...Outdoors A feral cat is not socialized to humans.

Either she was born outside and never lived with humans, or she is a companion cat who has strayed from home and over time has become unsocialized to humans.

Meet our volunteers who give their time and love day after day and give our cats the care they need .

Without our dedicated staff Save A Gato would not exist..

Meet Us

Our success storyT/N/R around the worldMake a Donation Today... Please!

Take a stroll on the famous National Park trail named the Paseo del Morro and you will see several cats lounging on the rocks,some friendly others shy but all beautiful and healthy.

It all started in 2004 .

The Rest of the Story

JapanMeet David and Susan
Buenos AiresEden Botanical gardens
RomeThe well known Cat Sanctuary
Key WestThe celebrated Hemingway's cats
Your contributions are helping us further our work and giving a chance at a better life to our homeless cats.
© 2009 Save A Gato | Website donated by Unlimited Studios | Contact us

What We Do and What we don't do.

We are not a shelter .We work with the homeless cats of Old San Juan.

Below is an explanation of the program TNR:

Trap/neuter/return, commonly referred to as "TNR," is the only method proven to be humane and effective at controlling feral cat population growth. Using this technique, all the feral cats in a colony are trapped, neutered and then returned to their territory where caretakers provide them with regular food and shelter. Young kittens who can still be socialized, as well as friendly adults, are placed in foster care and eventually adopted out to good homes.

TNR has many advantages. It immediately stabilizes the size of the colony by eliminating new litters. The nuisance behavior often associated with feral cats is dramatically reduced, including the yowling and fighting that come with mating activity and the odor of unneutered males spraying to mark their territory. The returned colony also guards its territory, preventing unneutered cats from moving in and beginning the cycle of overpopulation and problem behavior anew. Particularly in urban areas, the cats continue to provide natural rodent control.

Another significant advantage to TNR is that, when practiced on a large scale, it lessens the number of kittens and cats flowing into local shelters. This results in lower euthanasia rates and the increased adoption of cats already in the shelters. For example, in San Francisco, after TNR had been widely implemented for six years, euthanasia rates for all cats, feral and domestic, declined by 71 percent. San Diego, after several years of TNR, also experienced substantially lower euthanasia rates.

TNR is not just the best alternative to controlling feral cat populations - it is the only one that works. Doing nothing has resulted in the current crisis where, in New York City alone, feral cats number at least in the tens, and possibly the hundreds, of thousands. Trying to "rescue" the cats and find them all homes is utopian and unattainable given their numbers and the futility of trying to socialize most of them. Trap and kill, the traditional technique exercised by animal control, is simply ineffective. If all the cats are not caught, then the ones left behind over breed until the former population level is reached. Even if all the cats are removed, new unneutered cats tend to move in to take advantage of whatever food source there was, and the cycle starts again. This explains why more and more animal control agencies are willing to try TNR.

Finally, TNR is an idea whose time has come. It recognizes there is a new balance in our urban and rural landscape, one that includes feral cats. It seeks to manage this new population with enlightened techniques that allow the cats to live out their lives and fulfill their natures, while minimizing any possible negative impact. TNR is a movement that will continue to grow as more and more caring people see its potential and, in time, it will become the predominant method of feral cat population control.


What we need badly

**#1 MONEY

**#2 DRY FOOD (200 lbs. / week)

#3 WET FOOD (14 cans/week)

#4 CLEANING PRODUCTS

.clorox

.floor cleaner

.paper towel

.dish soap

.sponge

.garbage bags

.antibacterial spray

#5 BATH RUGS

#6 CAGES (BIG)

#7 BOWLS & PLATES

My Jewish Learning: Recipe: Pizza Ebraica di Erbe


My Jewish Learning: Recipe: Pizza Ebraica di Erbe

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Recipe: Pizza Ebraica di Erbe

Double-crusted vegetable pie

Reprinted with permission from Cucina Ebraica: Flavors of the Italian Jewish Kitchen (Chronicle Books).

Called a Jewish-style pizza, this dish probably has its origins in the Italian south. Here the word pizza is related to the Greek pitta, a name for filo pies and a term still in use in Apulia, where many dishes reflect a Greek heritage. This recipe calls for pasta frolla salata, a short pastry that gives it a wonderful richness.

SERVES 8

For the Pastry

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

8 to 10 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter or margarine

1 egg, lightly beaten

2 to 4 tablespoons water, or as needed

For the Filling

Juice of 1 lemon

3 large or 5 medium artichokes

Olive oil

1 large onion, diced

I large bunch fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped (about 1/3 cup)

1 pound beet greens or spinach, coarsely chopped

2 pounds English peas, shelled (about 2 cups shelled)

1 tablespoon salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg, or to taste

2 eggs, lightly beaten

Olive oil or lightly beaten egg for coating pastry

To make the pastry, stir together the flour and salt in a bowl or in the container of a food processor. Cut in the butter or margarine until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Blend in the egg and as much water as needed for the dough to come together into a rough ball. Divide the dough in into two pieces, one slightly larger than the other, and flatten each portion into a disk. Place the disks in a plastic bag and refrigerate for one hour.

To make the filling, have ready a large bowl filled with water to which you have added the lemon juice. Working with one artichoke at a time, remove the stems and all the leaves until you reach the pale green heart. Pare away the dark green areas from the base. Cut the artichoke in half lengthwise and scoop out and discard the choke from each half. Then cut each half lengthwise into 1/4-inch-thick slices and drop into the lemon water to prevent discoloration.

Pour enough olive oil into a large sauté pan to form a film on the bottom and place over medium heat. Add the onion and parsley and sauté three to four minutes. Drain the artichokes and add to the pan along with the greens and peas. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook slowly until the mixture is almost dry, 10 to 15 minutes. Remove from the heat, let cool, and season with the salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Mix in the eggs.

Preheat an oven to 375 degrees F.

On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the larger pastry disk into an l1-inch round about 1/8 inch thick. Carefully transfer to a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Spoon in the filling. Roll out the remaining pastry disk in the same way into a 10-inch round. Carefully place over the filling. Trim any excessive over hang, then turn under the pastry edges and pinch together. Cut a few steam vents in the top crust, then brush with olive oil or beaten egg.

Bake until the crust is golden, 30 to 40 min utes. Remove from the oven and place on a rack to cool. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Notes

If you are worried about the bottom crust becoming soggy, sprinkle a thin layer of fine dried bread crumbs over the pastry before adding the filling. Alternatively, blind bake the bottom crust for 15 minutes, lining it with pie weights, let cool, and then add the filling.

This vegetable filling is suitable for making scacchi, a matzah pie. Use it in place of the meat filling, and substitute vegetable broth for the meat broth.

Joyce Goldstein

Joyce Goldstein is the author of many cookbooks and also works as a consultant to restaurants and cooking instructor.




Book can be purchased at Amazon.com

Overview: Sephardic Cuisine

Sephardic cuisine refers to the foods eaten by a large and diverse group of Jews that bear the unique stamp of their regions of origin, which include Spain, North Africa, the Middle East, Egypt, and Turkey. Italian, Indian, and other non-European Jewish foods are also sometimes included in this mix.

There is logic to this broad grouping: Almost all of these lands were part of the Islamic world. The Arab conquest of the 7th and 8th centuries united land from the Iberian peninsula and the Atlantic Ocean to China and India. Active trading went on between these lands, spreading new food all over the region. Eggplant from India, spinach from Nepal, and spices from the Near East are examples of foods that spread throughout the Islamic empire.

Jews participated actively in Islamic society. They were successful in cultural, political, and financial arenas. Thus Sephardic cuisine often represents refined, even aristocratic, food. Besides the quality of the food, the Jews of the Islamic world stressed quantity as well. Asceticism was not valued, and lifecycle celebrations such as circumcisions and weddings were lengthy and luxurious.

Cookbooks that cataloged medical advice alongside recipes were a common genre of literature in the Muslim world. The 13th-century Cookbook of the Maghreb and Andalusia, one of the most important of these books, lists five Jewish recipes. All of these are full of spices and aromas and are detailed in their ingredients and preparation. One such dish, a chicken with giblets, was made with, among other things, fennel stalks, coriander, oil, citron leaves, eggs, flour, and chicken liver. The dish is first roasted and then left to sit in murri—a fermented condiment used in medieval cooking—vinegar, rose water, onion juice, and spices. All the dishes in the book, including the Jewish ones, exhibit delicate attention to flavor, texture, and presentation. Jews also authored recipe and dietetics books. Isaac Israelicus’ 10th centuryBook of Foods was translated into Latin in the 15th century and used in medical schools until the 17th century.

When the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, most made their way to North Africa and Ottoman lands such as Turkey and the Balkans. Half of the North African Jews lived in Morocco, and the Jewish style of food that was common there is still considered one of Morocco’s four national food styles. The Jews who settled in the Ottoman lands were typically upper class, and their foods resembled the foods of the urban nobility. The kebabs, pilafs and dolmades (stuffed vegetables) of Turkish Jewry are still some of the most recognizable Sephardic dishes.

Fruits, vegetables, spices, and grains were plentiful in the Mediterranean climate, and thus plant foods figured heavily into Sephardic cuisine. Indeed, Jews were responsible for spreading the use of certain plant foods. Italian Jews prepared artichoke in an innovative way. Leeks and fennel, first used in Jewish cooking, were also later used in non-Jewish cooking in the area. Meats were eaten by Mediterranean Jews, but--except for Shabbat (the Sabbath)--fish was more often on the menu.

The Sephardic Jewish communities began to decline in the 18th century. Colonialism and natural disaster hit these communities hard and, on the whole, the Sephardic communities became impoverished. Nonetheless, Sephardic cuisine still retains the character of its unique heritage, a panoply of foods from many different lands that reflect an intense intermingling of cultures that were often well-to-do and sophisticated. It is difficult to identify particular Sephardic foods as Spanish or Greek or Arab. The movement of the Sephardic community and the unique blending of cultures gave rise to an assimilated and variegated cuisine.