This is my blogchalk:
United States, North Carolina, Carrboro, English, Paul, Male, 56-60, All Music, All Food.

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Sunday, August 17, 2003

I did frisbee practice with the leftover SOS biscuits, throwing them into the creek bed from my porch. This afternoon, I saw a squirrel run across the grass with a biscuit in his mouth. Funniest damn thing, it was 4 times as big as his head. Liz and I watched another squirrel at the sliding door feeder that closes up from their weight. Persistent little bastard. We laughed at first, but then he tried to hook his back feet to the cover at the top of the feeder and pull up the sliding cage so he could eat. He was not successful, but later he came back and sat on the Plexiglas dome over the feeder, looking down and studying it… I twirled a whole chicken in the Showtime rotisserie, first time I’ve used it for chicken in a long time. The syringe that comes with the Showtime has a wide needle, which is better than the narrow ones you usually see in cooking specialty stores. I pumped up the bird with an olive oil/lemon juice mixture; along the leg bones, the thighs, the base of the breasts and right into the breast along the wings. Gravy was made from the giblets, chicken stock, the drippings, and some sauvignon blanc. Mashed potatoes and gravy, sautéed mushrooms, and twirled chicken. No pictures were taken. When all was done we just ate it. The movie today was Kiss Me Kate, a DVD of the 1999 London revival. Last Sunday, we watched Good News, the 1947 movie musical with Peter Lawford and June Allyson. I’d never seen Kiss Me Kate before, a black hole in my Broadway education. The whole reason I bought it was a news article I’d read during the week that used extensive quotes from the show’s “It’s Too Darn Hot” number. That pretty well describes the weather here, I’m ready for autumn. 11:54:00 PM    comment []

Harvesting Whales For Research: A MiniRant (not a minotaur)   I’ve never understood whaling any more than I’ve understood how other cultures develop a taste for groundhog or monkey brains. Blubber is not food to me. Chicken is food, even when it is pumped up with hormones and antibiotics and yellow dyes – beef likewise, even underaged and dyed with red. It’s a cultural thing.   So now Iceland wants to resume killing whales for “research.” What kind of research? You harpoon it and eventually it dies. You can simulate that with a computer game. The same people who tell us that untested ADM corn with hamster genes is safe for groveling third-worlders tell us that environmental psychopaths are responsible for the “hysteria” about endangered species. Fine, then recombinate a whale for the blubber-deprived Icelanders.   No, my argument is not with corporate food-mongers or sleazy distortionists. My gripe is about a word, “harvest.” Even GM corn is planted. It is a vegetable. You give it fertilizer and the sun and rain will make it grow. Then you harvest it. A whale is formed by a consummate union between sea mammals (pause a moment for a mental picture, maybe with the the 70s strains of Captain & Tennille’s Muskrat Love in the background). Then they swim about, eating bril and making funny little geysers, growing naturally  into adults - until some minimum wage Icelander, risking his life in the most dangerous work on earth or sea, uses a cannon to shoot a deadly spear into it.   That guy did not play Captain & Tennille over loudspeakers during the ritual of consumation, he didn’t nurture "Junior" with loving handfuls of bril – he just showed up as a johnny-come-lately opportunist to kill it.   I’m okay with that, just say it. He did not “harvest” it – he killed it. Do all the “research” and mealy-mouthed PR groundwork you need to do to get your delicious blubber – but don’t fuck with the meaning of words. Unlike the whales, they will fight back. Whale murder is not morally equivalent to a bucolic wet dream of Farmer Jed in his bib overalls joyfully swinging a scythe and bringing in the sheaves. The correct word is "kill." 5:45:12 AM    comment []

Right now, the computer room reminds me of "attacks" on the original Star Trek set, where they’d tilt the camera and have everyone run from one side of the room to the other. Everything is on one side of the room. Don’t let Twyla know, but I’m back to running The Hoover SteamVac™.   Only two umbilical cords remain (a guy at work sent me one of those chain emails last week with the endorsement “this struck a responsive cord in me.” Conversely, I wonder how and “umbilical chord” would sound. Would it be louder or softer than Bob Dole’s applause?), power to the router and a coax connection to the cable modem. I confess I panicked when I lost my Internet connection. I checked all the coax connections and they seemed solid. I hadn’t realized that power to my router came from a strip I had unplugged. Despite being an “expert” in computer problem determination (and nominally a “professional”), my initial reaction is to stare into the abyss. Something inconceivable has occurred and I don’t have a clue as to what it is. That moment of panic passes more quickly for me than it does for a novice, but it still exists. Obviously, I found the problem and, once again, can receive precious nutrients from Mama Internet.   The other problem, on my backup computer, was confirmed as “resolved” today when the new stick of memory I got as a warranty replacement a couple of weeks ago was installed. The AMD 1.2GHz system booted and played that happy little Windows XP tune.   The second computer is a “Hand Me Down Rose.” All the parts originally came from computer #1 as I gradually upgraded. I do a lot of work with video and audio, which can be very time-consuming. Having a second computer allows me to continue blogging, sending email etc. while converting captured AVI video to MPEG or removing clicks and pops from a captured LP. It’s not that often, but the backup is nice and basically cost me nothing that I hadn’t already spent. 4:55:10 AM    comment []