While looking for lard at Food Lion for my Christmas baking (in the oven right now), I ran across a shelf (just above the bacon) with a row of products from Neese’s Sausage: country sausage, liver pudding, souse, and “c. loaf”. The first sounds tasty, but the second made me think that there are few words in the English language that sound worse together than ‘liver’ and ‘pudding’. I’ve had souse — once — and found it disgusting, and the name of c. loaf made no impression on me one way or the other, though the first ingredient is pork stomachs, so it’s not very high on my list of things to try. A look at the Neese’s Sausage website told me that they have other products, including liver mush. A fan site describes it as follows:

A southern American food composed of pig liver, head parts, and cornmeal. It is commonly spiced with pepper and sage. Considered a more tolerable version of scrapple, livermush was most likely brought south through the Appalachian mountains by German settlers from Philadelphia. Livermush is colloquially known as poor man’s or poor boy’s pâté.

It is a regional variation on Liver Pudding. It has a different recipe, including varied spices and seasonings. For some folks there is no substitute – only livermush in the morning will do.

Livermush is commonly prepared by cutting a slice off of a pre-prepared loaf and frying it with grease in a skillet until golden brown, much like you would SPAM. At breakfast liver mush would be served alongside grits and eggs. For lunch liver mush can be made into a sandwich with mayonnaise, either fried as above, or left cold. As liver mush’s popularity rises, it is appearing as a primary ingredient in dishes such as omelets and pizza.

As for the liver pudding, the official Neese’s site assures us that “it doesn’t taste like pudding and it doesn’t look like liver”. Perhaps I’ll try it some time. I’ve tried duck tongues and curried goat and sea cucumbers, so how bad can liver pudding be?

By the way, when I found the lard, it was only available in 8-pound buckets with handles. No problem: I bake a lot, and lard lasts for months in the refrigerator.

Winter begins . . . . . . . . now.

So how about some snow for Raleigh?

If the Canadian Human Rights Commissions deprive Mark Steyn of his human right to write what he thinks, and other Canadians of their right to read his thoughts, I suggest replacing the maple leaf and blood-red stripes on the Canadian flag with a more appropriate leaf and more appropriately-colored stripes:

If you don’t recognize the leaf, here’s another version depicting the fruit of the same plant. Either would show what kind of republic Canada will be if Maclean’s loses its case before the HRC.

By the way, it’s interesting, isn’t it, that two of the most sinister phenomena in North America today have the initials ‘HRC’?

As the whole Blogosphere knows, the Canadian magazine McLean’s is being sued by the Canadian Islamic Congress in an attempt to silence Mark Steyn. Stanley Kurtz has a good summary here: His conclusion is unarguable: “It is essential that there be widespread public condemnation of the attack on Mark Steyn. Not only does this ‘human rights’ complaint have to fail, it has to fail miserably and with embarrassment.”

It seems to me that the best way to make it fail “miserably and with embarrassment” would be widespread ridicule by masses of ordinary people. Why not start an umbrella organization dedicated to freeing Steyn from oppression and call it the Mark-e-Steyn Liberation Organization? Other groups under it would be the Mark-e-Steyn Liberation Front, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Mark-e-Steyn, the Mark-e-Steynian People’s Party, the Mark-e-Steynian Democratic Union, the Mark-e-Steynian Popular Struggle Front, and the Active Organization for the Liberation of Mark-e-Steyn, just to start with. If dozens or hundreds of demonstrators showed up to support him carrying signs with these names on them, the press would have to cover them.

The most obvious uniform for demonstrations would be the one article of clothing popular in both Canada and Palestine: the black woolen ski mask. However, that could be seen as both cowardly and threatening, so I recommend a flannel keffiyah in a nice lumberjack plaid pattern.

Of course, offensive weapons would be entirely inappropriate, but it might be best to carry something that would tend to repel hostile counterprotestors. Jars of holy water to baptize the unwary? (I don’t suppose Canon Law permits involuntary adult baptism, but would the average militant Muslim know that?) Water pistols charged with Molson or Yukon Jack? Pigskin briefcases? Porkpie hats? (They don’t contain any significant percentage of actual pork, do they?) There may be other possibilities. (Speaking of pork, if Fatah and Hamas ever made up their differences and combined into a single movement, they could call themselves FatAss.)

Sympathizers for Mark-e-Steynian rights could point out that Mark-e-Steyn was born in Canada, and later settlers have no moral right to dispossess him. Other slogans would practically write themselves. Perhaps the most obvious is “Insult those who behead for Islam”. The comments are open (though moderated) for further suggestions.

That would be “electron band structure in germanium, my ass”. I don’t remember enough of my high school physics to know whether this the sort of thing drunken physicists would say to each other, but it sounds like it could be. (I did cheat a bit by adding the comma.)