But for the FIRST TIME IN HIS LIFE John McCain is on the right side of a moral question.  Let's see if that means he's no longer welcome on Sunday morning.

The litany of brutality, lawlessness and lack of accountability serves as a reminder of what a horrible decision President Obama made at the outset of his administration to close the books on this chapter in our history, even as he repudiated the use of torture. The C.I.A. officials who destroyed videotapes of waterboarding were left unpunished, and all attempts at bringing these acts into a courtroom were blocked by claims of national secrets.

"We deal almost exclusively in weird shit (my shit is hardly weird enough, but they have to publish it because I work there), and though your collection has its weird moments, it wouldn't be dadlerworld if it didn't, it's shot through with a large portion of the sweetly sappy (BeFree-tale, Mommies & Daddies, & the final story, frinstance), sappy with poignancies to be sure, but not quite Dr. Cicero's [the publishing house's] evil style.

"...IF I MAKE IT TO ELEVEN you might claim as evil, but's it's not, it's painful sappy, an utterly respectable genre. [The other stories, except for one], I gotta say, they're fun and all, but fially more charming than crazy, to tell da troot."

He includes my "suicide story" in the sweetly sappy. And by suicide story I mean, you know, every writer has to have one tale where the protagonist jumps off the bridge at the end. He's the only cat who hasn't said it was the darkest, most psycho-sexually brooding thing they'd ever read. To him, the dude who could get it published for me...it was goddamn sappy.  (Insert primal scream here.) I am officially done for the day. Gonna have a big bloody mary, maybe one of the two hash pills I kept from my sis-in-law's care package, and punch the padded walls or something. So it goes in failed former writerland. Could be worse, I could be without the love of a brilliant woman and equally brilliant child.

Phuck it.

In her speech, Ms Yousafzai said the award was not just for her: "It is for those forgotten children who want education. It is for those frightened children who want peace. It is for those voiceless children who want change.

It's been very depressing to read how bad a job of journalism one of my favorite magazines did.   An entire University and a group of men were run through the muck based on what everyday seems like more of a lie then truth.

Rape is a serious issue and to me on campuses comes from an inappropriate and risky world of casual sex and alchohal/drug use backed up by a host of social issues floating in the background that enable or persuade young men to see women as sexual objects rather then people.  

It'd be great to have that discussion as even I can think back 20 years to an attitude I had as young man that was a little to cavalear about what being in college meant and what I should expect in terms of "hooking up".   There is definitely a culture change and new expectations for young people that is kindly called "freedom" but can end with sexual misconduct and even rape when taken too far and it is not just at the individual level.  

 I would never blame a victim and ultimately men have much more responsibility in these situations but I think we kid ourselves if we don't acknowledge the reality that the party culture that exists on many campuses and has for decades has a dark side that often ends with two people put in a situation that makes for horrible decisions and often tragic outcomes.

With apologies to those who cringe at recipe comments-

I have been selflessly striving to attain the ultimate oatmeal cookie.  I have spared no time or expense in this holy quest.  I believe I am closing in.

2 cups oatmeal (more can be added to achieve ideal consistency but that's going to be close)
2 cups flour
5-6 oz slivered almonds
5-6 oz dried cranberries (raisins work but...)
1 Tbsp cinnamon  
1/2 Tspn nutmeg
1 Tbsp baking soda
1 cup sugar
2oz poppyseeds (that's 2 of the little containers)

Small Chocolate or butterscotch chips can be added but feedback tells me simpler is better

Mix that all together

In another bowl combine

3 eggs
1Tbsp vanilla
1/2 stick of softened butter
3 4oz containers of applesauce (they are sold in pacs of 4 or 6) if you can find it use Strawberry Appelsauce-that's just applesauce with strawberries added
1 cup brown sugar

Use a mixer to whip that up good

Combine the two

Plop it on sprayed cookie sheets and bake at 350

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT

ovens vary but it's very important that you bake them just short of too long.   To the point caramelization starts to happen on the bottom. ABOUT 15 mins maybe a little less

I call them

OATMEAL NIRVANA

Medical students to hold nationwide `die-ins' and protests Wednesday because #BlackLivesMatter

Students at more than 70 medical schools - in New York, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere - will protest lack of indictments for police killings in Ferguson, Mo., and New York, and to spotlight racial bias as a public health issue

Anyway, Rudin had read my thriller, loved it, wanted to buy it. But, as I found out when I had a meeting with his LA exec in on the Paramount there on Melrose, his hands were tied. This was my first experience with Hollywood execs on this level, and of those same execs having remote controlled office doors. When Heather (Rudin's exec in LA) seemed to magically make her office door close behind me as she sat at her desk, I was like some dipsht*t greenhorn blown away at the sight of a sno-cone machine.

Anyway, I was told that even though Rudin wanted my script, Paramount wouldn't buy it for him, thought it too dark, the lead character not heroic enough (he was a sex addict being blackmailed by the ex hubby of a long forgotten woman he'd phucked). But, it turned out, Rudin wanted me to rewrite a script he had already bought, but which I was told needed a serious rewrite. CROSSING BELMONT it was called, I could never forget that title, phuck the author if he sees this -- you got paid big, you hack, get over it.

So after my agents told me the story with Rudin, and how he wanted me for this rewrite assignment, they sent me the script. When it came in the mail, I couldn't open the manila envelope for days (this was just prior to email files becoming the norm). I kid you not, it took me a week to open that envelope and read the script. I was so convinced that I was way out of my league at that point, I'd gotten myself in too deep and would be revealed as a one-hit non-wonder. After all, I had it on good info from my lawyer Rudin paid mid-six figures for the screenplay. How could I, a guy whose script couldn't get sold no matter how many people thought it was brilliant, how was I supposed to make this big spec-sale script better? Day after day I stared at the envelope on my desk, afraid to open it. My agent called to ask what I thought of it. I told him I needed to read it again. Ha. I needed to read it, period. Finally, after a week, I had a few drinks and cracked the bastard.

And oh how my eyes were opened.

Tt was like reading something written by a below average, upper middle class, white high school creative writing student. I do not exaggerate when I say there was not a salvageable line of dialogue or description in the piece of sh*t. Not one.

Unfortunately, I was still in my 20s, my head was spinning, and I secretly despised everyone in Hollywood involved in my career. Today, knowing what I know, phuck it, I'd bullsh*t my way right into that rewrite job. For heaven's sake, even back then it woulda paid six figures for half a year's work probably. But, young clueless bink that I was, I froze like a deer in headlights and did the WORST thing I could've possibly done, did the best sabotage job on my career I could've pulled off.

I told the truth.

I told them they'd wasted that quater million dollars, or however much they had put down the sh*tter, that the script was a lost cause (which it was, but still, come on kid, make your bones while you can...), and I explained exactly why it was a joke and could've be raised from the storytelling dead.

I dug my own grave. Effing moron.

You want to talk Freudian self-hatred in motion, there it was.

After this ridiculous meeting, when I'd essentially yapped my way out of a big payday, I proceeded to drive off the Paramount lot in my sh*tty Nissan Sentra and, SLAM!, got sideswiped by a rented U-Haul. My car was so small and wispy, the truck's occupants had no idea they'd even hit me, much less caved in the entire passenger side of the tin-can car. I can remember watching the U-Haul just vanishing west down Melrose as the sun was beginning to set. I hated late afternoon meetings. The traffic was miserable afterwards.

Good times, good times.

But if you're ever on Melrose there at Paramount, heading west, and you want a good burger, hit AstroBurger at Melrose and Gower. Been there as long as I can remember, I was maybe 7 or 8 first time I went there with my dad.

The District will be prohibited from legalizing marijuana for the much of the coming year under a spending deal reached Tuesday between top Senate Democrats and House Republicans to fund the federal government through next September.

The development -- upending voter-approved Initiative 71 -- shocked elected D.C. leaders, advocates for marijuana legalization and civil liberties groups who earlier in the day had grown confident that the measure would be at least partially protected while Democrats still controlled the Senate.

However, with Republicans set to take control of the chamber in January, the defeat suggested that the will of D.C. voters -- who approved marijuana legalization last month by a margin of more than 2 to 1 -- may be suspended indefinitely.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court handed a big win to Amazon and companies like it. In a unanimous decision, the court ruled that businesses should not be required to pay workers at warehouses for the time they wait to go through mandatory security screenings at the end of the day. Workers might wait in line for five minutes to go through a routine anti-theft screening or they might wait 25 minutes; regardless, the employer does not need to compensate them for that time.

The ruling hinged on the justices' interpretation of the Portal-to-Portal Act, a 1947 law that says companies do not need to compensate workers for "preliminary" or "postliminary" activities. A main goal of the Portal-to-Portal Act was to exclude workers' commutes from the time companies were required to compensate, as well as other activities that were not related to the "principal" job. In the case decided Tuesday, which involved a temp agency that has contracted workers to Amazon's warehouses, the court said security screenings were not "integral and indispensable" to the workers' jobs, and therefore not required to get extra pay.

While Ms. Bongiorno apologized but claimed she did not know what was going on, the judge said that she should have known and was breaking the law when she fabricated and backdated fictitious trades on her bosses order.  The judge recognized that she did not mastermind the Ponzi scheme, but she followed instructions, "willfully blinding herself.  She relied on Madoff's good blessing, rather than apply her own good sense and moral compass."

Winner of the Prize Un Certain Regard Award at this year's Cannes Festival, Kornel Mundruczo's newest film is a story of the indignities visited upon animals by their supposed "human superiors," but it's also an brutal, beautiful metaphor for the political and cultural tensions sweeping contemporary Europe. When young Lili is forced to give up her beloved dog Hagen, because it's mixed-breed heritage is deemed 'unfit' by The State, she and the dog begin a dangerous journey back towards each other. At the same time, all the unwanted, unloved and so-called 'unfit' dogs rise up under a new leader, Hagen, the one-time housepet who has learned all too well from his 'Masters' in his journey through the streets and animal control centers how to bite the hands that beats him ...

Scott has a typically matter of fact response to charges of racism.-

Ridley Scott has attributed the casting of his film to pure marketing concerns: "I can't mount a film of this budget, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain, and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such. I'm just not going to get it financed. So the question doesn't even come up."