Carrie's Bar & Grill

Voices That Care -- Warren Wiebe

Since I am on a Warren Wiebe moment, and his relationship with David Foster ... enjoy. (pssst, he's at the end)

Labels: music, Warren Wiebe

I may have lost my virginity, but I still have the box it came in.

Bartender Carrie @ 11:42 PM 0 Tip Jar

Warren Wiebe, Amazing Grace ...

As those that have been reading my blog know by now, I've been on an Amazing Grace marathon search.

I found this Warren Wiebe piece. No embedding allowed, but I will link to it because I am a huge Wiebe fan. He committed suicide which still astounds me, because he had so much going for him.

As a hockey fan, Warren was a Kings regular and he sang America The Beautiful at most of our home games. I have missed his voice for years, now.

Labels: hockey, Warren Wiebe

I may have lost my virginity, but I still have the box it came in.

Bartender Carrie @ 11:19 PM 0 Tip Jar

Another Fox Faux Pas

An interesting post over at Daily Kos. Seems that Fox News, after they spent an inordinate amount of time condemning President Obama for bowing to the Emperor of Japan, decided to conduct a poll to prove their point that Americans want their leader to spit in the eye of other leaders. Problem with the poll, though, was that 67% of Americans said they had no problem with "the bow" or with an American President bowing to the leader of another country, if that is the country's custom. So, although commissioning the poll, Fox News has not aired the results -- obviously because the results did not support their ridiculous contention in the first place. The poll appears on their website, but it seems to have gone by the wayside in promotion on their programs.

As the poster states:

Perhaps Fox should change their slogan: we report and you decide, but only if it's something that we think will make you hate President Obama.

Labels: liars, media, news

I may have lost my virginity, but I still have the box it came in.

Bartender Carrie @ 6:50 PM 2 Tip Jar

More Amazing Grace

Next to singing the Star Spangled Banner, this song is the purest and hardest to hit note wise, musically.

Done for the night. Hope you at least got my spiritual moment this evening.

I am not on a Baez moment, I promise you. But trying to find a classic Amazing Grace version from Joan just pulled up all these great videos.

Labels: music

I may have lost my virginity, but I still have the box it came in.

Bartender Carrie @ 11:38 PM 0 Tip Jar

It Ain't Me, Babe

I am not on a Baez moment, I promise you. But trying to find a classic Amazing Grace version from Joan just pulled up all these great videos.
I am a product of the 1960's music generation.

Love her or not, she was influential in the music field, and this song which was a Dylan hit ... and her commentary before singing the song, what can I say.

Labels: music

I may have lost my virginity, but I still have the box it came in.

Bartender Carrie @ 11:20 PM 0 Tip Jar

Joan Baez

I was really trying to find Amazing Grace by Joan ...YouTube is really, really, restrictive ... damn it.

Labels: music

I may have lost my virginity, but I still have the box it came in.

Bartender Carrie @ 11:13 PM 0 Tip Jar

Another Pathetic Insurance Denial Story

The United States is the only developed country without a universal, cradle-to-the-grave health care system. In no other developed country would a girl be on “the verge of never hearing again” because a for-profit insurance company decided that its bottom line was more important than keeping a child from going deaf.

Disgusting. Truly, disgusting.

And, for the record, let me say that if any of the thus far floated "reforms" for health care actually see the light of day, I am not holding my breath, but my nose, because, as those that have been following this debacle already know, nothing being presented by the House or the Senate put so much as a dent into "reforming" health care as it currently exists in this country.

One of the truly sad, sad, things about this apparently free country we live in.

H/T to Think Progress.

Labels: health, just plain fucked up

I may have lost my virginity, but I still have the box it came in.

Bartender Carrie @ 6:51 PM 0 Tip Jar

Word Association, Saturday Night Live Style!

I have no idea how long this will stay up, but after watching Tavis Smiley interview Paul Mooney (his new book is entitled "Black Is The New White") he ran this old clip from Saturday Night Live, which I remember, but really had no clue who wrote it.

This is Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor, some of the best comedy ever, and most assuredly, never likely to be seen or repeated on national television again!

Labels: comedy

I may have lost my virginity, but I still have the box it came in.

Bartender Carrie @ 7:34 PM 4 Tip Jar

SnapIt 3.5 Review - IT SUCKS!!!!!

UPDATED AND BUMPED: November 18, 2009-The product won't work anymore, and all my emails to Digeus have gone unanswered. SOOOOOOO, ALL OF YOU OUT THERE -- Do Not, I Repeat, Do Not BUY THIS PRODUCT.

I have been asked to review a new screen capture program called SnapIt. First, I had to compare it with other screen capture programs. Being a blogger, one would think it would be imperative to have a screen capture program, but I have never used one.

I first installed SnapIt, and it took about 30 seconds to figure out how to use it, and by the second capture, I had it pretty much figued out, enough so I used it for a blog post, capturing the screen image of an interactive crossword puzzle widget I had recently put on the blog.

I then used the same puzzle to try other programs, which I had to download trial versions, by the way.

The first one I tried was 5 Clicks. That sucked. Considering I could use SnapIt within 30 seconds of installing it and adjusting the settings, I have yet to be able to get the 5 Clicks program to work properly after five minutes, One down.

Next I installed EasyWeb2Pic Pro. Forget that. Supposedly, the program directions are to show up on my toolbar, but not only did it not show up on the toolbar, there was nothing showing that would allow me to put the damn program parameters on the toolbar! Try as I could, after reading the "Help" offerings, I could not even use the program! Two down.

ScreenHunter 5.1 Pro was the next one I tried. It was by far the most complex, and although after aboout ten minutes I was able to figure out where the pictures were going (on my desktop), I was able to reset it to send the pictures to a new folder I created for capture purposes. This had the most extensive screen directions, options, formats, etc. It was not easy, although it did offer the ability to alter the screen image captured. Personally, I am not interested in that. I want a click and it's done program, which this is not. Three down.

After searching the web for more screen capture programs, I have to say that SnapIt was by far the quickest to use, easiest to figure out, and fastest to capture and store. No added toolbars necessary. No extensive cutting and pasting options. Although it is not free, most of the ones I tried were also not free. The one that was free had the most tools and options and degree of difficulty.

I like SnapIt, and would definitely purchase it. According to the new FTC rules, I am obligated to inform my readers that I have been offered the program in exchange for a review. However, having a screen capture program is a must for most bloggers and website owners. From the mundane (games) to the extreme (politics), it is a handy tool for both fun and news. SnapIt allowed me to capture an interactive screen that I normally could not just click and save, and put the "screen image" on my blog, in under 5 seconds.

After trying at least six other programs for the purpose of capturing screen images, I would have to recommend SnapIt unequivocally as the easiest to use, and the quickest product on the market.

Labels: blogs

I may have lost my virginity, but I still have the box it came in.

Bartender Carrie @ 6:01 PM 0 Tip Jar

Where Is Our Humanity?

And speaking of equities:

After watching for hours as the patients moved through the clinic, it was hard to believe that I was in America.

Eighty-three percent of the patients they see are employed, they are not accepting other government help on a large scale, not "welfare queens" as some would like to have us believe. They are tax-paying, good, upstanding citizens who are trying to make it and give their kids a better life just like you and me.

Ninety percent of the patients who came through Saturday's clinic had two or more diagnoses.Eighty-two percent had a life-threatening condition such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or hypertension. They are victims of a system built with corporate profits at its center, which long ago forgot the moral imperative that should drive us to show compassion to our fellow men and women.

Health reform is not about Democrats or Republicans or who can score political points for the next election, it's about people. It's about fairness and justice in a system that knows none. I'd defy even the most hardened capitalist-loving-conservative to do what I did on Saturday and continue to pretend that the system in place right now is working.

H/T to C&L for this piece about Countdown and its experience when visiting a free clinic.

Humanity has lost its way somewhere along the line, and I am hard pressed to figure out how we, as humans, are going to survive. It's a kill or be killed mentality out there, and I am not so sure the kill aspect of humans is not going to wipe out the rest of us.

Labels: health

I may have lost my virginity, but I still have the box it came in.

Bartender Carrie @ 9:13 AM 0 Tip Jar

Wesley Pruden's Bigoted Op Ed Slanders Obama

This has got to be the most ridiculous thing I have read from a right wing nut job, and that includes shit from Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter.

But Mr. Obama, unlike his predecessors, likely knows no better, and many of those around him, true children of the grungy ’60s, are contemptuous of custom. Cutting America down to size is what attracts them to “hope” for “change.” It’s no fault of the president that he has no natural instinct or blood impulse for what the America of “the 57 states” is about. He was sired by a Kenyan father, born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World and reared by grandparents in Hawaii, a paradise far from the American mainstream.

It is like what someone posted a while back when Obama went to bat for the Olympic games to be in Chicago -- he was criticised for pushing the for the games to be in this country. On the other hand, the same poster indicated that if he didn't go and push for the games to be held here, he would have been criticised. The point, of course, is that is does not matter what he does or doesn't do -- he will simply be criticised by the nut jobs because they really, really, cannot handle the fact that a black man is in the White House.

And that's what it comes down to. I haven't heard such vile speech directed at one man since the Martin Luther King days, when white people felt it was their right to put down black peopleand white men felt it was their duty to lynch black men who even dared walk the same side of the street as a white woman.

And all this recent uproar because Obama "bowed" to the emperor of Japan! Hell, I work in the Korean community and it is common courtesy to bow to the elders when they come into the office. I bow, for goodness sake! Where was all the outrage when Bush was holding hands with the Saudi Prince for goodness sake? HOLDING HANDS, TWO MEN! Where was all the homophobic outrage from the white men then? (Well, of course, we already know most of them are secretly attracted to men, as one by one, those pesky congresscritters of the "R" variety keep getting caught, with da boys, and we must not forget those Christian white men who are busted with drugs and boys!)

And to try to ratchet it up to Obama being something of a wimp and not standing up (pardon the pun) for his country, is just mind boggling how stupid people can be, and how even stupider people who believe this shit, can be.

Wake up you hoodlums out there. Yeah, I mean you, the southern white boys that still think you own the fucking world (well, and of course, the United States). As Bob Dylan once sang -- the times, they are a changing. Get with the program. Oh, and grow up. I'm tired of this country (not to mention a lot of the world) being run by disgruntled little rich children, who want to put everyone else who doesn't have that silver spoon in their mouth (or up their nose) in some kind of concentration camp and pretend that inequities do not exist in this world, and doesn't believe that it is every man and woman's duty to help out every other man and woman, to rise up and be the best human being they can be.

Labels: just plain fucked up, Republicans, right wing nutjobs

I may have lost my virginity, but I still have the box it came in.

Bartender Carrie @ 8:41 AM 2 Tip Jar

Who Is John Scott?

For those of us who use mass transit in Los Angeles, especially the buses, for at least a year or more, there have been these stickers posted, which are orange in color, and they have the words "Who Is John Scott" on them. I just thought it was some bus riders' movement (I am sure many do not realize that there is a bus riders' union here in Los Angeles), and pretty much ignored the stickers. They weren't grafitti to me, just stickers.

Anyway, apparently the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department arrested John Scott, who turns out to be a 73 year old man!!!! And he had nothing really to say -- just sold T-shirts that have the same "Who Is John Scott" on it. The weblink on the stickers take you to some pretty awful (design that is) website, and I guess this guy has been making a living off of "Who Is John Scott" for quite some time now.

Live and learn.

Labels: just plain stupid

I may have lost my virginity, but I still have the box it came in.

Bartender Carrie @ 1:32 PM 0 Tip Jar

Whatever Hapened To Thanksgiving?

Picture courtesy of Wikipedia.

Labels: holidays

I may have lost my virginity, but I still have the box it came in.

Bartender Carrie @ 11:42 AM 2 Tip Jar