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Playing with my food, and other things...
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Sunday, February 29, 2004 |
If all The President wants to do is ban gay marriage, no new constitutional amendment is necessary at all. All that needs to be done is to repeal the 14th Amendment, which starts out with this:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws
And includes this penalty:
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
A super-majority, which is all you need to add some more unnecessary fluff. Keep It Simple, Stupid.
7:21:42 PM 
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Liz and I spent the day shopping. One place we hit was Williams-Sonoma, where she bought four goblets and I got this oven thermometer. Baking is more science than art, unlike a lot of other cooking. This tool makes the science better.
INSTRUCTION MANUAL
MODEL OT-03WS
Introduction
Congratulations on your purchase of the Digital Oven Thermometer and Electronic Timer. As most professional cooks know, oven temperatures can vary greatly from the set temperature showing on the oven dials. In order to cook perfectly you must know the real temperature of the oven. This digital thermometer gives you the average temperature of the oven during the time food has been cooking after the initial warm up period. It will also alert you if your oven goes 15º Fahrenheit under or over the set temperature.
How Ovens Work
Oven temperatures work on a wave cycle with the thermostat. Simply, if the oven is set for 350ºF the oven will continue to heat until the temperature is usually about 25º over the set temperature. At this time the oven will shut off and cool to about 25ºF below the set temperature and continue this cycle throughout the cooking process. The graph shown below illustrates this process.
The Digital Oven Thermometer is a unique device that differs from older oven thermometers that only showed the temperature at that time of measurement. This thermometer takes continual readings every ten seconds and averages them from the time your oven has been on since reaching 30ºF below the set temperature. With your Digital Oven Thermometer it is now possible to know the actual temperature at which you have been baking or roasting for a specific period of time. Another benefit of the Digital Oven Thermometer is that it can be viewed without opening the oven door, which can be extremely important during baking since an open door can reduce the temperature in the oven over 100ºF and disturb the baking cycle.
5:37:11 PM
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Saturday, February 28, 2004 |
Canned Mummy
Noodles in broth.
8:14:45 PM
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A little more on photo fakery (which I admire and indulge in occasionally with enough clumsiness to make certain that the phoniness is obvious). Ken Light, the photographer who took the original John Kerry photo that was recently merged into an image with Hanoi Jane to titillate rightwing cretins with Internet access, has some words to say about truth and photography in the OpEd section of today’s Washington Post. These are a few:
I've spent a lot of time answering questions about this in the past couple of weeks, and this time, as far as I can tell, the Internet has come as close as it gets to a correction. If you use a search engine to look for my Kerry picture now, you'll find the hoax explanations before you see the photo itself. So what do I do now about the conspiratorial Web site that's trying to convince its readers that my original picture was the hoax -- that Fonda really was at that podium with Kerry, and somebody edited "Hanoi Jane" out? All I can do is pull Roll 68 out of the file cabinet again. It's my visual record, my unretouched truth.
Of course there are “some people” who are not interested in the truth. We used to call them “fucking liars,” but in these politically correct days they prefer to be called Republicans. They are not that either, I’ve been a Republican and know they stand for nothing that the party birthed by Lincoln and brought to maturity by Eisenhower did. These people believe that “the truth” is fungible, that it is whatever you can get away with, whatever you can dupe enough people into believing just long enough to maintain electoral dominance.
Neither are they “conservative.” Barry Goldwater was a conservative and, grudgingly, so was Ronald Wilson Reagan. No, the people who slime Kerry and Cleland truly are just fucking liars. They know you can’t run for office under that banner so they grab the nearest most convenient label and hide behind it, like a frightened child beneath a mother’s skirt. All they care about is power and control. They have no interest in the truth. It is only an inconvenient obstacle between them and the total domination they crave. They need to obscure the truth because, if enough people ever really saw the real truth, they would be spiraling up the mountainside, like the villagers in Frankenstein, carrying torches and prepared to inflict involuntary immolation on these fucking liars. The truth is their mortal enemy.
7:45:05 AM
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Friday, February 27, 2004 |
A Pat On My Own Back
Not really, it just made me laugh. Liz’s sister sent me an email forewarning me that her suitcase was probably permanently locked because the airport security Nazis had abused it mercilessly in their quest to find explosives hidden within. It’s one of those number locks where you twist the tumblers until you see your secret magic number and then you can pull out the retention pin. Her sister had said it might take pliers, wire cutters, maybe even pruning shears to break in and get her knickers for her.
I spoke with Liz on the phone a bit and she mentioned that the center tumbler was “a little loose.”
“Aha,” say I, the professional problem-solver and bicycle repairman, “It might have slipped!” I suggested that she slowly rotate the center tumbler while sliding the retention pin back and forth.
I put the pliers in the trunk, along with the wire cutters that were already permanently there, and went out to pick up a loaf a bread and some Vantage 100s to sustain her on this, her first day back.
A snow day, designated “dangerous” for travel, the world bicycle repairmen traverse without fear.
When I finally got to her place, she told me that my out-the-ass, I dunno, what the hell solution had actually worked. The slippery center cylinder had changed from a seven to a nine. I bravely summoned my alpha male façade and modestly laughed, but inside I was thinking, “I know a few secrets about locks and electricity, eh?”
Then she regaled me with Jordik tales and pictures of her native Yorkshire, abbeys, walls they call bars, and entire cities built with a Minster as their focal point – and I quickly realized that my modesty had some basis in reality. I am truly an ignorant fuck who can occasionally make a lucky guess.
3:11:14 PM
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Read ‘em and weep was her adjustable slogan
This is the amount of snow that it takes to totally shut down the entire state of North Carolina. It’s a fucking disgrace. Like, you know, invest in some snow removal equipment. I’m grateful for the day off but this is ridiculous. Snow Happens. Deal with it.
7:52:05 AM
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Thursday, February 26, 2004 |
A couple of bacon-wrapped filets sealed up, ready for long term freezer storage.
7:23:48 PM
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Some filets and other tenderloin goodness on their way to the freezer. Not pictured: one on the way to my stomach as another snow day looms.
Tastes pretty good, better than a chilidog. Wright’s peppered bacon on the outside.
6:32:08 PM
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The Tory MP Ann Winterton was sacked from the Parliamentary Conservative Party today after publicly joking about the deaths of the Chinese cocklers who drowned at Morecambe Bay.
Party leader Michael Howard said he was withdrawing the Conservative whip from the MP for Congleton, Cheshire, after she refused to apologise and withdraw her comments, understood to have been made during an after-dinner speech.
Just weeks after 20 Chinese cocklers died after getting caught in the tide in Bolton-le-Sands, Mrs Winterton reportedly referred to two sharks who were sick of eating tuna and so one said: "Let's go to Morecambe for a Chinese."
What’s pathetic about this attempt at Earl Butts style humor is not the insensitivity behind it, but the ignorant use of language – especially damning for a Tory Englishwoman who should be well versed in both the Queen’s English and the vernacular. The tragic flaw is not in “Morecambe,” which is topical and hip - and there’s nothing hateful in saying “Chinese,” at least as far as I know.
The word that puts the focus all wrong is the simple indefinite article “a.” It makes you graphically think of the slaves who died when the tides rose unexpectedly, instead of the food that’s carried out in white rising rectangular boxes with wire handles. It reveals the mind beneath the quip.
What she should have said is, “I’m tired of tuna salad, let’s go out to Morecambe for Chinese.” Then at least it would have been funny.
Some politicians refer to moments like this, when they accidentally reveal their innermost thoughts to the literate public, as "political correctness."
That catchphrase excites their literacy-challenged constituency, who can repeat it and spit tobacco juice at the same time without tripping - but don't you kinda wish these phrasemongers had treated undergraduate prerequisites in their native tongue seriously instead of blowing them off as unnecessary fluff impeding progress to a Gentleman's C in Business Administration?
So don’t fault the rest of us just because we understand exactly what you said - catchy slogans cannot mitigate evil thoughts.
5:35:15 PM
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Here’s a sauce included with the great filet mignon techniques in a Cooks Illustrated article written May, 2001. Here’s the technique, which I’ll try later on tonight:
1. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position, place rimmed baking sheet on oven rack, and heat oven to 450 degrees. When oven reaches 450 degrees, heat 10-inch heavy-bottomed skillet (not nonstick) over high heat on stovetop until very hot, about 3 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, rub each side of steaks with 1/2 teaspoon oil and sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Place steaks in skillet and cook, without moving steaks, until well-browned and a nice crust has formed, about 3 minutes. Turn steaks with tongs and cook until well-browned and a nice crust has formed on second side, about 3 minutes longer. Remove pan from heat, and use tongs to transfer steaks to hot baking sheet in oven.
3. Roast 2 to 4 minutes for very rare (center of steaks will appear cherry red and feel very soft and loose when cut with tip of paring knife), 4 to 6 minutes for rare (centers will appear red and soft), 6 to 8 minutes for medium-rare (centers will appear pink and feel firm but juicy), or 8 to 10 minutes for medium (centers will appear light pink and feel firm and compact). (After transferring steaks to oven, proceed with pan sauce.) Transfer steaks to large plate; loosely tent with foil, and let rest about 5 minutes before serving.
…and here’s the sauce. It sounds like a perfect one for a molcajete:
ARGENTINIAN-STYLE FRESH PARSLEY AND GARLIC SAUCE (CHIMICHURRI)
Makes 1 generous cup
Like a loose, fresh salsa in consistency, this mixture is a common accompaniment to sautéed, roasted, and grilled meat in South America. For best results use flat-leaf parsley.
1 cup (packed) fresh parsley leaves,
washed and dried, from one large bunch
5 medium garlic cloves, peeled
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons water
1/4 cup finely minced red onion
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Process parsley and garlic in workbowl of food processor fitted with steel blade, stopping as necessary to scrape down sides of bowl with rubber spatula, until garlic and parsley are chopped fine (20 one-second pulses); transfer to medium bowl. Whisk in remaining ingredients until thoroughly blended. Spoon about 2 tablespoons over each steak and serve. (Sauce tastes best when used fresh but can be refrigerated, with plastic wrap pressed directly on surface, up to 3 days.)
4:29:23 PM
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I really wanted to believe these cruddy snow photos were done for until next year. They sent us home from work at 2:30 and we’re supposed to get 4-8 inches by tomorrow morning. Enough already.
For a picture of real snow, pretty snow; check out this picture – or this one.
3:26:09 PM
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Wednesday, February 25, 2004 |
Greenspan today modestly suggested* economic gericide as an efficient means to preserve the unprecedented recovery spurred on by idealistic GOP tax cuts, but President Bush hesitantly distanced himself from the Chairman of the Fed’s proposal. After all, Big Al did also serve under Clinton for 8 years before he endorsed those tax cuts. Can’t trust him completely; he might have become tainted.
The President also feels that younger voters would be better served by investing for retirement in the Video Poker accounts pioneered by GOP moralist Bill Bennett. Rupert Murdoch has expressed commercial interest in the distribution and promotional rights to these visionary ideas and FCC Chairman Michael Powell has all but guaranteed that the intellectual and media rights to them will be Murdoch’s exclusively. But don’t count out the Right Rev. Moon just yet – there’s helluva lot more simoleons to be made in mass media than mass heterosexual marriages, so he won’t go down without a fight!
Hey! - There’s a whole shitload of money to be made here and that will be great for the economy! The economy is an idea; and ideas are bigger than people. People are only tiny little piss ants who squirm around in their own slime and spread disgusting ebolient (made that one up - just cleaning out the barrel, relax) germs on the tunicles (one shot across the bow, fair’s fair) of our hallowed economy.
They foul our vaticinations (eat that one, Adolf! – it’s the money shot) with filthy habits and obscene animal behavior. In the quest for purity, it is essential that we research all means necessary to eliminate humans and free the economy from the imperfect mortal constraints they impose.
Praise the economy. Let it shine like a diamond in the sky, in a place of destiny, gracing a ring on the hand of Almighty God. Call 1-800-759-0700 and make your contribution right now!
*Swiftian dilemma: The young are so tenderer to eat, but the old are so much easier to kill.
6:41:57 PM
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Twyla rests peacefully in her sunlit catbird seat and wonders why I am standing over her instead of bowing down before her. The last 3 mornings, at precisely 4:18am, she has awakened me with a shriek that would curdle the blood of a banshee. An “outdoor” cat, or maybe one released by its working class owners at that hour, intrudes into Twyla’s territory on the porch just outside and lets out a few wimpy lo-decibel shrieks of its own. The novelty of this little ritual has worn very thin quickly.
5:06:03 PM
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This ain’t no chilidog, no-sir-ee
I ran into my friend GW at the Harris Teeter and he directed me to the meat counter where whole tenderloins were going for $7.99 a pound. His grand daughters were having a ball at the store with him. He told me he was going to email me about this special because the butchers told him that there would be no rain checks on it - when they’re gone they’re gone. After seeing my enthusiasm, I think he went back for a second.
With Liz returning from the UK tomorrow (She told me on the phone last night that she’ll probably be “knackered” after a day in the air), it will be nice to have a real meal soon. This tenderloin will be sliced into thick chunks, frozen (maybe some will be wrapped with peppered bacon during that process), then vacuum-sealed for future use. If you seal them fresh, the pressure crushes them. They don’t dry out noticeably during a 4-6 hour spell in the freezer, resting on a baking sheet covered with saran wrap for easy removal.
4:49:44 PM
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Tuesday, February 24, 2004 |
BREAKING NEWS
Bush’s Teeth Earn Enough Points To Retire From Texas Air National Guard!
(AP) WASHINGTON, Feb. 24, 2004 --- Reliable sources, Baptist ministers, and dentists in Birmingham, AL, are reporting that George W. Bush’s teeth have now completed enough “equivalent duty” to qualify for full retirement, with honors, after undergoing a complex series of maneuvers designed to reduce harmful plaque and restore a pristine luster to their precision military surfaces.
Marc Racicot today provided indisputable evidence that The President’s molars not only reported for duty in the Mekong Delta and served with honors at Khe Sahn, but that his left canine (which the fawning brass affectionately nicknamed “Spot”) was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for valor above and beyond the call of routine drug tests.
Bush’s teeth will now be removed from his mouth and allowed to retire to a jar in a commissary at Ft. Benning, GA, where reserve soldiers who voted for Max Cleland will be forced to salute them at every sunrise or face a military tribunal at that place we call Gitmo, asshole!
The remainder of Bush’s mouth was unavailable for comment.
8:46:21 PM
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The Big Tent
President Bush today took The First Step toward banning all marriages, and all other Religious Ceremonies. The history of the Constitution has been to limit the power of government and expand the rights of citizens. Once the Constitution is used to limit rights, the camel has entered the tent. A camel inside the tent is a very dangerous thing, even if he’s straight.
Separation of Church and State has worked well for over 200 years. This fatwa has absolutely nothing to do with the very First Amendment which says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” before it says anything else at all, before it even pauses for a comma. It’s as close as we’ve ever come to a Prime Directive.
Today’s announcement is an act of desperation and demagoguery, designed only to muddy the waters. Even Divine Intervention can’t bring his grades on the economy, the budget, or executive judgment up to a Gentleman’s C by election time. So a gesture to the bigots in the peanut gallery is his only ugly shot.
6:38:35 PM
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While Mel Gibson’s father denies the Holocaust (“Impossible! – Not Enough Gas!”), and Mel prepares to unleash his epic retelling of The Passion Of The Christ (Nice touch there, Mel, that authentic Biblical redundancy on the definite article!), now would be a good time to visit Kelly Moore and see his series of Crosses.
I forget whether crucifixes are supposed to scare away vampires or werewolves, but words like “anti-Semitism” can sure scare the bejesus out a lot of people who are neither. Anyway, Kelly has also started a Salon blog, Coffee with a Modern Primitive Artist, and it’s worth a visit just to read his quotes:
"Great spirits
always encounter Violent
opposition from mediocre minds."
Albert Einstein
5:43:30 PM
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Reidar at Fortinbras Radio Weblog has some interesting comments on major news sites requiring a username, password, and email to read articles. He also has a sly trick up his sleeve. Let’s listen in on Reidar reveals his secret to us:
· When you're asked to log in to a news site, try the userID freethepresses. If an e-mail address is required as the userID, enter: freethepresses@example.com
· Then enter the password: freethepresses
...That should get you right in the door, without providing your personal information. (OK, yeah, sure, they may be looking at IP addresses or referring URL, but this is at least some kind of rebellion against the wanton mandatory harvesting of personal information that plagues the Internet.)
I've tried this strategy – with success – at the following sites:
· The New York Times
· The Washington Post
· The Los Angeles Times
· The Chicago Tribune
5:00:54 PM
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Monday, February 23, 2004 |
Here is one of the top entries from The Guardian’s Shampaign PhotoShop contest. See the other top entries here…
Then scoot on over to issue 51 of Virtual Occoquan, the Ayn Rand Memorial Barbecue edition.
Peace!
Now let's sing a few lines from The Ballad Of John & Yoko!
Christ, you know it ain't easy
You know how hard it can be
The way things are going
They're gonna crucify me
6:25:15 PM
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I’m taking a day off and watching The Gathering Storm. Sir Winston advises painting and bricklaying to fend off “the black dog.” And when you have company, there is always Dundee Cake, no matter how dismal the state of your finances.
12:42:05 PM
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Sunday, February 22, 2004 |
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Spot, an English springer spaniel with a White House pedigree who spent nearly 15 years with President Bush and his family, has died, the White House announced Saturday.
An administration official told CNN that Spot was put to sleep Saturday around 1:30 p.m. after suffering a series of strokes. Her remains will be taken to the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
The loss of a beloved pet is tragic, not something you would wish on your worst enemy. So I offer my sincere condolences to President Bush, his wife Laura, and their family for the loss of their dog Spot.
2:22:15 PM
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I am so proud to announce that I have completely lost my mind this week! I’ve been gradually clawing my way back to reality by doing menial tasks – salsa therapy. There is fine redemption in the meticulous dicing of peppers, tomatoes, onions, and garlic. Only problem is, once I get close to reality, I don’t like what I see – but I can deal with it better.
One problem with Zappa and my wireless jukebox is the endings. Most of Zappa’s recordings after One Size Fits All were concert recordings. Yeah, you think, inferior sound, not up to studio quality. No, he always took along the best technicians and equipment available so they were quite good (after Fillmore East, June 1971 anyway, which still sounds cruddy). Unlike many of his contemporaries who relied on studio technology to cover their bands’ weaknesses, Zappa’s bands all could deliver in a live environment. The trademark was entire sets in which one tune segued into the next.
The energy accumulated and the torture never stopped. – But that’s exactly the problem with slicing and dicing them into discrete named tracks when you play them on any media player. There are no endings, so it gets chopped arbitrarily at some point between the tracks. This is annoying enough that I’m gonna redo all the CDs so they play an entire album side instead of breaking them down into individual tracks. This is especially critical as I start to dub the 6 double CD volumes of You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore, affectionately called YCDTOSA by frankophiles, which were engineered by the incredibly brilliant Bob Stone. Every nuance must be savored.
1:20:09 PM
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Undaunted by my Thesaurus, Hitler emerged slowly once again from beneath my keyboard, and softly burped.
4:15:51 AM
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Saturday, February 21, 2004 |
I Don’t Get It III – Gay Marriage
You know, people have been pooching each other a helluva lot longer than they’ve been participating in arbitrary/traditional legal/religious ceremonies to bestow some moral legitimacy on it – so what’s all the fuss about now?
4:01:29 PM
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I was in the middle of listening to Eva Cassidy sing some tunes from Imagine when the music suddenly stopped. You’ve heard my trials and tribs to the HP ew5000 wireless “jukebox,” so here’s my recommendation. If you want School Of Hard Knocks training in 802.11 wireless technologies, then this is the box for you! I have learned more in the past 5 days than I’d ever thought possible. I’ve had to become familiar with every setting on my 802.11b wireless router as well as every dumbed-down setting on the ew5000 receiver. I’ve spent more time dicking around with it than I have spent listening to music from it.
These things initially sold for $300 but I got mine for $130 less than a year after they came out. I expect the ones that don’t end up in trash cans to hit eBay for around $30 in just a month or two. I can tame this beast, but doubt many other people have the patience. So, if you have thirty bucks and aspirations of becoming a network engineer, bide your time and wait for opportunity to strike. In the cage, it is a wonderful toy.
Meanwhile, while the music stopped and started, I made a pressure cooker batch of beef broth and it is mighty fragrant. It’s 70 degrees outside, the sun is shining brightly, and the smell of spring in the air complements the hearty broth perfectly. Lots of house finches on the feeders, It’s hard to believe this week began with a winter storm warning.
3:07:34 PM
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This cover, done by Cal Schenkel, is a classic. The album itself was Frank Zappa’s tribute to the 50’s doo-wop that he loved so much (you can read about all the doo-wop references here).
I made a reference to the cartoon balloon over the Zappa-dog’s head earlier this week, but got it wrong. When I said “this crappy blog,” I should have said “this cruddy blog.” It was never meant as false modesty or self-deprecating humor, it was supposed to be an obscure Zappa reference – but I got it wrong!
10:46:32 AM
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6:03:56 AM
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These are some dehydrated apple bits, being reconstituted over gentle heat with a little water, two tablespoons sugar, and a happy splash of Grand Marnier. When our Salon blogs were infants, Rayne sent me a crate of wonderful Michigan apples. There were too many to use immediately, so I made applesauce, apple butter, apple rollups, and dehydrated the rest. Much as I love to chew on dehydrated apples, they are better in a pannekoeken when they have soaked up a little nectar. No chilidog for breakfast today, I have reached the weight plateau where my taste buds are screaming for a little flavor, so I’ll indulge them a bit. I’ll break through this barrier later, right now there’s gonna be a pannekoeken.
5:21:58 AM
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Friday, February 20, 2004 |
Doing The Lambeth Walk
Liz calls herself a reincarnated flapper and constantly amazes me with her knowledge of music from the 20s, 30s, and 40s. She knows the words and sings along with Limehouse Blues, a piece I had known only as an instrumental. When I got a George Formby CD from Past Perfect, she started singing I’m Leaning On A Lamppost before I’d even gotten it out of the jewel case.
So I kinda wish she were here right now to give me some of her insight on The Lambeth Walk. My discovery of it began with another Past Perfect CD set, The Songs & Music Of World War II. First lyric to connect with me was “I’ve got the deepest shelter in town,” which was Florence Desmond’s signature tune. I imagine if you’re living through The Blitz, a bit of suggestiveness seems harmless. In a real war, you’re probably more concerned about survival than, say, a few nanoseconds of a boob flash.
Sorry for the accidental editorial insertion, I really mean to keep on typing about The Lambeth Walk. As I listened to those CDs, often while blogging here, I began to sing along with The Two Leslies (wait not those two Leslies, these Two Leslies) singing “We’re going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line.” I marched around the computer room when Sam Browne sang There’ll Always Be An England (the referenced site says that “lefties hate this song”). I cried as Marlene Dietrich sang Lili Marlene, a song whose own story tells the tragedy of war more deeply than any other – a song played over loudspeakers by opposing sides during breaks in the battle. Yes, we don’t hate you, we appreciate your sensitivities, we just need to kill you.
Meanwhile, while all these anthems, ballads, and comedy tunes (I haven’t mentioned Der Fuehrer’s Face by Spike Jones & His City Slickers, one of my favorite bands, a precursor to both Weird Al Yankovic and Frank Zappa) were bubbling in my mind like champagne, a silly counterpoint began to bubble like viscous lava from my admittedly insane subconscious: “He’ll get by without his rabbit pie, so run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run.”
After a week or two I was completely infected. It was like a virus in my mental Outlook Express, spamming me with idiotic lyrics that started to creep into my otherwise very professional work life. I’d be updating video drivers on a computer and would suddenly burst out with “He’ll get by without his rabbit pie” and my co-workers were simply not buying my “story” that I’d been listening to WW II tunes.
The virus replicated and began to dominate my conscious mind. Whenever I stopped doing, it started playing on my mental jukebox. If I had been spontaneously singing Green Acres or Speed Racer, that woulda been okay, everyone does that, but this Run, Rabbit, Run is just too fucking weird.
Don’t take this as a recommendation, au contraire – do not ever listen to this tune. I am your negative example! Imagine me on The 700 Club talking about how my life was ruined before I discovered Vitamin Christ, only this time it ain’t booze, drugs, or adultery that’s the salient manifestation of Satan – it is a song that possesses you. Stay away from it!
Like any addict whose entire existence becomes an obsession about a substance, I began to do research on Run, Rabbit, Run. On my CD, it was performed by Flanagan & Allen. Not a whole lot out there about them except that they changed the lyrics to “Run, Adolph, Run” as the war was winding down and people really liked that. A lot of their songs are about arches and umbrellas, kinda like a trademark, I suppose. They made some movies, but they’re all out of print now – you can’t even get them on VHS. Too bad, these guys were genuinely entertaining.
So I looked up the demon that actually created this musical poltergeist. The man behind those lyrics is Noel Gay. He was not only a talented composer and lyricist; he was an impresario who founded an agency that has threads running through British TV and music to contemporary times. Run, Rabbit, Run is not his most important contribution to the world of music.
He is most famous for a musical, Me and My Girl, that won 3 Tony awards in a Broadway “reproduction” in 1987. His real name was Reginald Armitage, but he used “Noel Gay” as a pseudonym because he thought that using his real name would taint his position in the church (Imagine today - yeah, I don’t want my Sunday School reputation tarnished, so I’ll call myself “Noel Gay”). The Lambeth Walk was a tune in Me and My Girl, though the dance itself was supposedly spontaneously created by Miss England in 1938, a year before the war broke out, but a year after Arthur Murray taught it in the US (the "fog of dance?"). The dance craze rapidly spread across the continent, even gaining a foothold in increasingly scary Nazi Germany. The Gestapo demanded that Noel Gay should sign an affidavit certifying that his lineage was pure, untainted by Jewish blood, to lend an air of legitimacy to the cultural phenomenon he had helped create.
He refused.
I always get uneasy when Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness Of Crowds infect the deep unconscious of the masses. It’s generally a sign that some really nasty big shit is coming down the pike pretty soon. We’re not quite having any of those symptoms right now, but it is my modest observation that all the psychic barometers (Janet & Michael Jackson, flash mobs, carbophobia, etc.) are dropping quickly.
7:03:57 PM
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Thursday, February 19, 2004 |
Tonight’s Chilidog
It has a little cheddar cheese, but no mustard.
Sister Ruth reminded me of a couple of more good Toledo memories. The art museum was special, but I was focused on a time when Art was the guy who fixed our TV. I’ve since managed to appreciate art, especially the surreal, that fixes your mind. The art museum also appears in my dreams. Extra credit to Sister Ruth, Steve Raker, and Sylvie for jogging my memory on that.
And the train station – we could get a round trip ticket to Toledo for three bucks, if you were underage <g>. I remember especially the chiclets dispenser in the Deshler train station. Go up to the window, buy a ticket, then use the leftover pennies to load up on Tutti Fruiti chiclets to explode in your mouth while you waited for the train.
The worst trains were the ones they called “milk trains.” They would stop anywhere. It seemed like 50 stops on the way back from Toledo, but I still have dreams about those trains too – stopping in multiple track locations with Chinese fire drill exits and entries, women with cigarette holders and red velvet coats, walking around the train and sometimes lighting atop it before sitting down in the very same seats, never questioning.
I loved the zoo too, but I never figured out the petting zoo. The animals accepted their fate gracefully, but I don’t think they ever really liked having small humans run their hands over them, probably preferring to be left alone like our farm animals. Our cows “sort of” acknowledged us, but they never liked us or disliked us, just accepted that humans were things that just walked around them and milked them until we eventually killed them. In the petting zoo, the animals “sort of” knew that we were no threat unless they bit us or kicked us in the face, but they were just as boring as farm animals – except for the glorious peacocks who spontaneously gave you instant dreams when they fanned their tails.
8:58:00 PM
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Po-jama People
You know, the Brits kicked out ol’ Winston in 1945, in a Labour Party landslide.
That’s the way of a Warp Resident. When the war is over, so is his claim to power. Old soldiers never die, but they do get dismissed.
In the US, our current Warp Resident paraded proudly in front of a Mission Accomplished banner on the deck of an aircraft carrier named for another Warp Resident, Abraham Lincoln.
That’s damn conclusive! Cue the fat lady, tell Yogi Berra, roll the credits, and raise the house lights - the warp is over! A made-for-TV Survivor moment – last man left standing!
But Warp Resident has been sliding in the polls ever since. Today, CNN reported that either Kerry or Edwards would defeat him by double digits (I always think of a single digit when I think of our Warp Resident – it’s the middle one on my right hand) if an election were held today.
Of course, the election will not be held today. That gives the bitch who ridicules crippled veterans, Gay Fedora, and that dope fiend on the radio ample time to fantasize a whole bevy of new aspersions - and cap off their patriotic presentations with a sober determination that “there are numerous disturbing rumors about both non-Warp Resident Pepsi candidates a and b.”
We have done it before and we can do it again, add some shaking heads for a little extra drama and it’s a major production worthy of Spielberg – all financed by a warpchest rivaling that of a major Hollywood blockbuster or Steinbrenner’s payout for the 2004 Yankees. Formidable.
Meanwhile Former, But Still Authentic, Warp Resident whips out his witching rod to divine, I dunno, about 8 kerjillion new jobs by the end of next week and blames “number crunchers” when he gets called on the sheer insanity of it.
They are probably those same derned number crunchers at the CIA who conjured up the 500 tons of imaginary sarin, mustard and VX nerve agents that Warp Resident reported with a straight face in the 2003 SOTU!
Them damn number crunchers!
How can you fire them for incompetence when they keep changing jobs? Still there is a little justice – I bet their butts hurt really bad from having all those big numbers pulled out of ‘em.
8:15:42 PM
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Had to go the lobotomy route to get my wireless jukebox up and running again. The manual with the HP ew5000 says you should just unplug the receiver for a while (if you have a cable modem, you’ve heard this “reset” procedure before – but if it saves them 11 cents for a recessed button, that’s the way things work in China now), but it still retained all my network settings. My wireless router has a soft reset (in the 192.168.0.1 utility) and a recessed button on the back, so I could reset that. Uninstalled the HP Media Server software, shut down, restarted, and reinstalled it. Hooked the receiver up hardwired 10/100 while watching the ew5000 using video capture software through the ATI composite video input. It was syncing up again.
Then, disconnected from Ethernet, I made the wireless connection to a default unsecured network. Success (I like that word better than “Fuck!). Changed the network name, then connected again. Success. Added SSIDs and, after a little twiddling, success again. Took the receiver back to the living room and the entertainment center (I hate “home entertainment center” – where do they think you’re gonna use it, in a barn?) and played my computer technician success theme, “You’ve Got A Bright Future In Sales” by Fountains Of Wayne. I think I’ve earned some grated cheddar cheese on tonight’s chilidog.
6:12:51 PM
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Wednesday, February 18, 2004 |
More Scandals Surface – Kerry Was A Lousy Bass Player!
"We put the band together to pursue the possibility of getting a little closer to the opposite sex," the band's piano player Jack Radcliffe tells the BBC.
"They weren't tearing our clothes off, but we enjoyed it, absolutely," Mr Kerry told the Washington Post.
Critics say the music, mostly instrumentals, has a raw, primal rock 'n' roll quality, in the tradition of music by Eddie Cochran and surf bands like the Ventures.
As the only member of the Electras to have pursued a career in the music industry, Mr Radcliffe is in no doubt that Mr Kerry chose the right profession.
"Most of us are Republicans, and most of us would prefer to teach George Bush how to play the bass rather than use John," he jokes in an interview with the World Service's The World Today programme.
9:16:03 PM
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I understand that most readers of this crappy blog are members of my own family or people searching Google images for “Japanese Orgy” and, frighteningly, both. That’s okay, as we say in Carolina, even a blind pig can find an acorn. I never knew pigs eat acorns, wonder if that would season their flesh like whey and grain fed Parma pigs, peanut-fed Virginia Smithfield candidates, or the more exotic pigs of Westphalia who snort down Zweiback with tea. Okay, my point is I found a contest at The Guardian is having a contest called Shampaign Moments where you Photoshop your favorite or least favorite Presidential candidate into a glorious or shameful photo-op. This should be fun!
7:37:33 PM
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I haven’t turned on the TV or watched a movie since Liz left for the UK over two weeks ago. I have been turning it on to play with my 802.11b jukebox and I should have left it off for that too.
The problem was initially with playing double CDs. The receiver just wasn’t seeing all the titles, probably because of its (undocumented) cataloging system. That was easy to fix. Sort the titles by file creation date, select the first group of 1-n and edit the properties to give the second set of 1-n a different album title. I was on a roll!
Then I decided to play with the settings on the wireless router. Mistake. I was bothered by a connection from IP 127.0.0.1, so I typed it in the URL and found I had installed a remote access program that I had forgotten about. Uninstalled it. Now that address takes me to Lycos! Shit! Better check all security. I checked all connections and recorded MAC addresses. Whoops! Better not broadcast that SSID. Where is that 06-0A-25-47-79-CF MAC coming from. I went into network properties and temporarily installed the XP firewall. I switched from 64-bit to 128-bit WEPS. Changed passwords. There, now my wireless network is secure.
So secure that even I can’t get on it anymore. I can see the signal, I just can’t get on. Fuck. I rebooted and there were two new users on the logon screen – the wireless receiver and my secondary email address. Fuck. I do this shit all day long, I don’t wanna do it at home. I want to drink a beer when I get home. That’s the first good idea I’ve had. I’ll drink a beer and worry about this shit when I’m in the mood for it. I’m certain nobody can get on my network if I can’t. I can put my music in the CD player and listen to it that way. Maybe I’ll watch some TV.
6:57:02 PM
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Tuesday, February 17, 2004 |
Some Reasons I Love Toledo, Ohio
We went there when the stuff we needed wasn’t available in Findlay. My first suit came from Tiedtke’s. It was wool and scratched me, but the man who measured me for it said he’d fix me up with his daughter. I thought that was incredible, even at only 11. My mom said he was just trying to sell a suit because he was Jewish. I developed a phobia about both suits and church, the only place I wore it, because my skin would itch all day afterwards.
One time we went to the Lions Store, which had library style lions outside the entrance. It was high class for a kid from the farm. We were sitting in the restaurant when a woman wearing multiple gold bracelets rattling on her arms walked by. She was wearing a dress fit for a queen and was walking with a shorter man who wore glasses. Her perfume was overwhelming. As she passed our table she spoke a sentence that began, “Are you insinuating…” and then her voice trailed off. She sounded pissed. The man shrugged. I never heard “insinuating” before but I knew it was really bad because it sounded like “incinerating.”
Dad always went to the noon show at WSPD, maybe it was outside the Rivoli theater. He won a lot of free theater tickets when John Saunders let him pick a key that might open a small locked box. I went to many matinees while my parents shopped. I saw 3-D movies like House Of Wax and It Came From Outer Space. The Star Theater in Deshler never played sci-fi movies like that – or, when they did, the prints were so scratched up that it was all you noticed. Never in 3-D, it was too expensive, no cool glasses.
WSPD-TV had a kid's show called Fun Farm. They had a contest every week and would give out prizes each Friday. One week they had a contest to draw a clown. Sister Ruth, always the better artist, dashed out a parody of a clown picture in a matter of seconds. I diligently copied it, taking many hours. the I colored it in and mailed it in. During school recess on Thursday, they came out to the playground and told me I had won second prize. "No big deal," I told me friends in my first attempt at false modesty, "I just won a contest." We went to Toledo the next day and I was on television! I got a clock radio with a complicated manual that only I could figure out. My parents kept that clock radio until it literally disintegrated and they always asked me to set the time and alarm.
One time on the way home from Toledo with my sister and my mom, I discovered that I had lost a precious comic book that would never make it to our farm town. I still have dreams about what might have been in it.
Sister Bubbles took me to a touring performance of South Pacific and I heard Juanita Hall sing Bali Hai. Once again my dreams were possessed, this time with a special island. I went to a Mud Hens game when they played in a rickety old stadium downtown - the way baseball was meant to be played. A guy named Sammy Meeks broke his bat during batting practice and gave it to me. My dad fixed it up with a couple of wood screws and we played baseball with it until it fell apart, unrepairable.
I saw Cinerama there. Lowell Thomas Jr. gave a short introduction on a normal sized screen, then the curtains parted like the Red Sea and his voice boomed out, “This Is Cinerama!” and there was movie just friggin’ everywhere. We never got that in Deshler either.
When the St. Lawrence Seaway was completed, big ships showed up in Toledo, unloading gigantic cargo containers with mysterious goods from all over the world. Some of them ended up at the store for Anderson’s. My parents bought a lot of stuff there because stuff was plentiful and comparatively cheap. One time my mother bought a combination wax paper, paper towel, and something else, I forget, dispenser there. It never worked right. It would get gummed up and the rolls of stuff never tore off cleanly. A couple of years later, after I’d left for college, I took a wax pencil and wrote “DEFECTIVE!!! – RETURN TO FACTORY!!!” inside it in big fat letters. About a year later, I came home again and it was gone. My mother had discovered the writing inside and they returned it to Anderson’s, who (probably terrified by my consumer advocate mother, who could scare Ralph Nader out of the business) refunded her the purchase price. I never told her I did it.
One day in my senior year of high school, a couple of friends and I decided we didn’t want to go to school after we were there. I had driven our family’s old blue ’52 Ford with Overdrive to school and so I said, “Let’s go to Toledo!” We went to the Gayety Burlesque and saw things that would make Janet Jackson blush. The popcorn in the automatic dispensing machines in the lobby was so stale it must have been popped a week before. I made a point of commenting that the midget comedian harkened back to the days of Vaudeville, which he probably did, but it was just beta testing for my later rationale that I bought Playboy because the articles were intellectually stimulating.
Around 1963-64, we liked to go to The Peppermint Club and The Carousel on Jackson street, I think, which may not exist anymore. A favorite band was The Fascinators. One night a friend of mine said, “Hey, they look like Johnny & The Hurricanes!” He had made the ID based on the albums covers in his large collection. Wow! Johnny Paris had just dumped the rest of the band and struck out on his own. I would watch Paul Tesluk play his cheesy Hammond B-3, wearing a cumnerbund, and wonder how anyone who looked that weird could ever hope to be a rock and roll star. He probably wondered too. He moved to Boston shortly thereafter and began a new career in carpet sales. Boy, that organ still sounded killer anyway. The unknown Beatles opened for these guys in the UK just a few months before. They were that close.
About that same time, I bought my first Fender guitar from Durdel’s Stars Of Tomorrow studios. It was a Fender Jaguar, like a Jazzmaster, but with a shorter neck. I also bought an amplifier, a Gibson Echoplex echo chamber (and was in a Corvair-totalling wreck on the way home from that), but Mr. Durdel talked me out of buying a fuzztone because he believed it was just a fad.
Those are some reasons why I love Toledo, a city for dreamers.
7:02:51 PM
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I was grinding some toasted coriander, cardamom, and cumin in an ordinary mortar & pestle when I just got fed up with it. The molcajete made short work of it, a matter of seconds. The little broom is called an escobeta and it’s very useful for getting the ground spices out of every nook and cranny.
5:15:35 PM
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Monday, February 16, 2004 |
I had heard just a few bass thumps from Viktor Krauss when I immediately decided he was great. The best bassists don’t usually get noticed, they are just the guys who pour the foundations, not build the skyscrapers - but if they suck (excuse mixed metaphor here) then everything quickly goes to Hooverville via the 1,000 flushes freeway.
If they’re good, everybody else sounds better – and plays better too. Even Viktor Krauss could not rescue Graham Nash’s horrid and syrupy Songs For Survivors, but he did cut a mean bass line that caught my attention. Now he’s caught NPR’s attention. I’ll post a link to the audio after it shows up around 7:30. Yes, he is Allison Krauss’s bro.
6:25:48 PM
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Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow
Wish I had my camera with me about an hour after this was snapped. The bright early morning sun and the snowy decorations were breathtaking. Check out the comment to my frozen rhododendron picture by Althaea – great Tennessee morning snow! Or better still, see it at her website.
5:59:18 PM
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First some links – sausage links. Of all places, from Texas Electric Cooperatives, Inc. The area east of Austin was settled by Germans, who brought their recipes with them and, bless 'em, kept right on grinding. This article, The Texas Sausage Circuit, features a map and a tour. The famous Elgin sausage is featured, but so are a lot of smaller operations. I want to go there on a sausage tour.
Next up, the world’s best Real Estate blog has moved. It’s not that much about real estate, it’s about life, links, love, and some other things I forget right now. The move was pointed out to me in an email from Hanan Levin. I’m glad for that, I’d forgotten how much fun is to be found at grow-a-brain: Here’s Hanan’s announcement:
Hello there,
As you may or may not know, our websites www.growabrain.net and www.TheGreatTeam.com disappeared about 3 weeks ago from the server, due to a hosting company's problem. It was a major disappointment to us, and probably also to some of the 250,000 readers who came to visit our blog last year. This forced us to hurry up with the web-upgrade that we were planning to do. I wanted to let you know that the new site is now online and even though it's still a "work in progress", it's beautiful! Please re-visit us at the new location, www.growabrain.net and bookmark its new address .
Hanan Levin, Super Realtor / Blogger
Finally, a nice surprise while looking at the Salon Blogs updates page: A blog called seeingToledo. “Probably Spain,” I thought, thinking about my cyberbud runswithscissors. But when I got there, it was unmistakably Toledo, Ohio – one of my favorite cities. Golly, he has breaking news of the crane collapse there. Something familiar about the blog number…hmmm…Holy Toledo! (I love saying that!), it’s The Agora. I never knew Douglas lived in Toledo. What’s more, he has a link to ToledoBloggers.com. I’m gonna spend some time there. Also enjoyed seeing a link to Worms Of Endearment on Douglas’ blog. That is Amy Stewart’s wonderful blog about worms and her book tour. (The Earth Moved).
One more: I've pretty much given up linking to newspaper articles because of passwords, cookies, and limited availability. Now Kevin Drum (yes, CalPundit, notorious for his recent work on GWB's National Guard duty) has shown us a way to link to NYT articles so the links still work weeks later. Thanks for everything, Kevin.
5:14:17 PM
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Sunday, February 15, 2004 |
 Baby, it's cold outside
11:06:12 PM
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I put the third pasilla in with the habaneros and the other stuff cooking. Ground up some more cilantro in the molcajete with some of the chilled salsa. Threw in another can of diced tomatoes. Some more coriander, more cumin. It’s done… (maybe)
This is free range cooking. It has nothing to do with recipes. I showed how I done it. It’s fun! Make your own. Put in the stuff you like; do it the way you like! Ignore me. I have no recipe. I am bogus.
I need a chilidog.
12:33:15 PM
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Safe Cooking
Habaneros always remind me of Halloween because they resemble jack-o-lanterns. Then they get me singing the Habanera from Carmen:
Ja
gut! Ja
gut! Ja
gut
nur Mut!
Die Liebe gleicht Zigeunerart
Wait a friggin’ minute! I don’t know German - and Carmen is Spanish! What has happened to my mind? Let’s go to babelfish and see what those words that possessed me mean:
Yes well! Well! Well only courage! The love resembles kind of gypsy
Aha! Now I understand. I seem to remember them as "You play with me, you play with fire." The latex gloves are not in the picture for a joke. Habaneros have earned my eternal respect. They like to linger around and surprise you in ways you don't want to be surprised. They have also earned a place in the Salsa del Alma. It just wasn’t hot enough. I’ll cap, seed, and chop these 5. Then they will simmer in a little tomato juice to stir into the salsa and give it a little something extra.
A little more brown sugar too, 3 more cloves of garlic, another teaspoon of kosher salt. This is the afterburner, the third stage of the rocket that delivers the payload into orbit.
11:11:44 AM
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Salsa del Alma
That’s what I’ll call it. I neglected to say that I added another can of diced tomatoes after Phazes I and II were combined. No more tomato juice was added. Wish you could taste this – even a spoonful leaves your taste buds reverberating for many minutes after. If anything gets added now, it will be a bit of tequila: Enough tequila to warm the back of the throat in an afterglow, completing the total soul saturation of this concoction. Lydia E. Pinkham would really like it then!
Still, much as I believe this addition would complete the salsa experience, caveats linger in the few remaining responsible lobes of my wilted brain. I left out beef broth for my vegetarian friends so I should probably leave out alcohol for my friends who are "allergic" to it. It's not a big deal, but nobody expects beef or alcohol in salsa and it's not my goal to inflict them. I'll put the tequila in my private stock. It's just dressing. As a skeptic, it's hard for me to believe something could taste this good without booze or meat. That's good enough.
3:26:23 AM
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Phaze III – The Easy Part
The molcajete makes quick work of cilantro. One cup of the merged Phaze I and Phaze II concoctions will be ground into this. Two limes will be squeezed and added to the combo as well – then enough tomato juice to make it all easy to load on one of Don Pablo’s tortilla chips.
This is not “hot” salsa, but it does contain many lingering and pleasant flavors. Now I can write the recipe.
I haven't named the pig yet...
2:43:50 AM
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Saturday, February 14, 2004 |
Phaze II in the blender
A little thicker than desired, but that can be fixed. More tomato juice was added to help create the essential blender vortex. About one more cup.
1:40:15 PM
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One Of The Great Thoughts Of All Time!
(at least so far this year). Mark Hoback didn’t say this on his blog, he said it on a comment here, but he did say that the release of Dubya’s dental records proved that he “was present for drills” during that troublesome period in Alabama.
He deserves credit for saying that.
I haven’t heard it anywhere else and it is funny. Now giggle!
1:17:35 PM
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This is Phaze II nearly completed.
I threw in a teaspoon each of mace and ginger to bridge the sweet-hot gap between the tip of the tongue and back of the mouth. The roof wanted more, so another tablespoon of cayenne was added. When this cools a bit, it will be run through the blender and more tomato juice or more diced tomatoes added if necessary. Then Phaze I from last night will be added. It will be heated briefly to mix them up, then refrigerated. Phaze III will include molcajete ground cilantro, addition of fresh lime and tomato juice, minor adjustments in seasoning/texture, and then it will become a recipe. The blueprint will soon exist, but the salsa is nearly done.
1:08:45 PM
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Still Going…
The third red onion has been added and, shortly after I snapped this shot, I put in a second cup of tomato juice. Then I turned the heat up, from LO to 2. Now I’ll do the final seasoning. Forgive the constant updates, in the end this will be a “recipe” not an ongoing process. Process is how you cook; a recipe is a blueprint.
Now I’ve tasted it and added a tablespoon of cayenne pepper and plain old chili powder. Think I might run this brew through the blender before combining it with the concoction from last evening, but haven’t decided that for sure.
12:10:36 PM
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Righteous
This is my paprika of choice and it’s available at Tienda at reasonable prices. This one is agridulce, bittersweet. It is smoked paprika and adds unique flavor to salsas and sausages. I threw a tablespoon of this into the garlic/tomato juice brew. If it sounds like I’m overdoing the seasonings, I confess, yes, that is the plan. This is not a commercial product where you hold back on the spices to appeal to bland palates and reduce cost. This is home cooked food meant to literally explode in your mouth with flavor. The paprika and garlic hit you right on the front of the tongue, the capsaicin stuff (more to be added) are for the back. It’s meant to make your mouth a hearth.
I threw another teaspoon of kosher salt in with the liquor. Some people believe in God, some in WMDs, some in both - I believe in osmotic pressure that moves flavors across boundaries they never knew existed. Salt facilitates that.
11:36:12 AM
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Salsa Phaze II
Smashing garlic cloves is fun! Slice ‘em in half lengthwise, giving ‘em a flat side so they don’t squirt out when your fist comes down on the other side of the chef’s knife. There will be longitudinal strands, so you have to slice to complete the process.
10 of these are being added to one cup of simmering tomato juice while the first half of the salsa rests comfortably in the fridge. This part is the yin, which will carry the remaining seasonings – mostly dried spices which need to simmer in the liquor a while.
11:02:52 AM
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A Valentine For Lydia
Lydia E. Pinkham concocted a “vegetable compound” in the 19th century which featured as an active ingredient our favorite vegetable – alcohol, measuring in at 22%! As the Temperance movement gained momentum, leading to Prohibition in the early 20th century, Lydia was forced to reduce the amount to 13% - making the vegetable compound sold for “female complaints” more like Chablis than Mad Dog 20/20.
Her company urged users with testimonials to “write Lydia.” "Any woman...is responsible for her own suffering who will not take the trouble to write to Mrs. Pinkham for advice" - even though she had died in 1883, some 30 years earlier. It is probably the circus atmosphere surrounding this snake oil product that inspired E. Y. Harburg to write the following ditty - frequently performed by Groucho Marx with highly-activated eyebrows, especially apparent during the “on a clear day you can see Alcatraz” lyric:
Lydia, the Tattoed Lady
(E.Y. Harburg)
Oh Lydia, Oh Lydia
Now have you met Lydia
Lydia the tattooed lady
She has muscles men adore-so
And a torso even more-so
Oh, Lydia, Oh Lydia
Now have you met Lydia
Lydia the queen of tattoo
On her back is the battle of Waterloo
Beside it the wreck of the Hesperus too
and proudly above waves the red white and blue
You can learn a lot from Lydia
There's Grover Walen unveilin' the Trylon
Over on the West Coast we have Treasure Island
There's Captain Spaulding exploring the Amazon
And Lady Godiva--but with her pajamas on
She can give you a view of the world in tattoo
If you step up and tell her where
Mon Paree, Kankakee, even Perth by the sea
Or of Washington crossing the Delaware.
Oh Lydia, Oh Lydia, now have you met Lydia
Lydia the queen of them all
She has a view of Niagara which nobody has
And Basin Street known as the birthplace of jazz
And on a clear day you can see Alcatraz!
You can learn a lot from Lydia!
--Lydia the queen of tattoo!
Lydia, oh Lydia, have you met
Lydia, the queen of them all!
She once knocked an admiral off of his feet,
The ships on her hips made his heart skip a beat.
And now the old man is in command of the fleet,
For he went and married Lydia!
5:10:08 AM
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Friday, February 13, 2004 |
Grind ‘em up good, pitch ‘em in the brew (I added 1 teaspoon kosher salt and a tablespoon of the dried oregano too), let it simmer about another half hour. I’m gonna rest it then (refrigerated) and have already started the chilidog.
8:46:30 PM
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This is a tablespoon (yes, tablespoon!) each of cumin and coriander seeds toasting in a nicely-cured iron skillet over high heat. When it gets so nice and aromatic that you want to jump in the pan with them and they start popping and jumping like they want to get out, it’s time to dump them into the bowl. Let them cool a minute before grinding.
Then make yourself a chilidog.
8:30:16 PM
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Just stirred the mess; 2 cans diced tomatoes, 2 red onions, 10 jalapenos, and one pasilla. It’s at the one hour mark and the heat is at “1,” one step abobe “LO” – as in “LO! -. And behold. A mighty throng of angels descended!!” Will try to get the cumin and coriander roasted, mortared and feathered pestled, but I’m workin’ up a mighty hunger for a chilidog.
8:18:50 PM
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For right now, one pasilla looks adequate. I'll let this simmer an hour (it's already been on the burner for another) and then rest it overnight in the fridge.
8:03:53 PM
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About half of the peppers have been cast like bread upon the waters and the rest will follow soon. Nothing new here in the prep. Cut the top off the pepper, slice in half lengthwise, remove the seeds with a spoon, slice thinly lengthwise, then dice each half group of slices.
I put Bobby Darin on the wireless album thingie for entertainment while I was doing this, but my musical experience was interrupted by high frequency bursts of sound. “Shit,” I thought, “I’m getting 2.4 GHz interference, probably from a neighbor’s router or a wireless phone." Blame the new component, the wireless digital receiver. So I switched to the straight up CD. Then there was another chirp. I moved around the room, it seemed to be coming from one of the rear speakers. I switched to FM, which doesn’t use any rear channels. “Chirp!” – “Shit!” I turned off the receiver completely. “Chirp!” – “hmmmm.” The chirps occurred about once a minute by my bookshelf. “Hmmmm.”
The smoke alarm! Yes! I took the battery out and the chirps stopped. I’d taken down that smoke alarm long ago, tired of “false positives” from bread baking. It needs a new battery! The wireless receiver is exonerated.
Remember that funny story near the end of the Reagan Administration, how they fumigated the whole damn White House like THREE TIMES because Ron & Nancy complained about “crickets” that kept them awake at night. That too was a smoke alarm and I truly believe that the petrochemical saturation of it is responsible for the strange and inexplicable behavior of all the White House residents ever since – but at least The Gipper only killed a few innocent bugs because of a false assumption, he didn’t go completely gonzo and make war on his contemporary hallucination of an Evil Empire. But he still bears responsibility for nearly every Presidential fuckup since. In my house, when the smoke detector fails, I just change the battery - it’s cheaper and nothing has to die! Problem Determination, “PD” – it’s a way of Life!
Find the problem and fix it - don't go off half-cocked with a revolver and a mouthful of patriotic rhetoric.
7:36:51 PM
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The red onion, chosen because it’s especially pungent and tangy. My chopping process on all onions now is to slice off both end, make a longitudinal incision to ease removal of the dry skin, then latitudinal slices off the ends (to protect the fingers), cut each slice in half, and then cut at radial angles, adjusting for differences in the layers with each cut. There are dudes on cooking shows who delight in dicing quickly by a “process,” after which the onion falls into chunks and the camera pans away, but you never know what the onion looks like on the inside until you slice it. This one, for example is “bifurcated,” and the “process” will result in a mess. Other hotshots like to rock the chef’s knife from the tip, but when you chop you also crush and a lot of onion essence is left on the cutting board or evaporates into the air. I’d never make it in a professional kitchen because my approach is slower. Treat each slice as an individual and keep the flavor inside. It takes more time, but you’ll rarely cry.
The two onions (a third may be added) were put directly into the sauce pan and the two cans of diced tomatoes were dumped atop, then the mixture will be gradually brought up to heat and the other ingredients added as they are prepared. Next: the peppers.
6:47:20 PM
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Some things for salsa
The slow food salsa is getting a reputation at work and people are asking me for the recipe or outright gifts. That makes me think I’m on to something, so maybe I’d better document the recipe in fixed form before it transmogrifies into something that’s completely different. Besides the stuff you see here, the will be roasted cumin and coriander, paprika (pimenton or Aleppo pepper), at least 10 cloves of garlic, and cilantro. The cilantro in the beer mug will not be going in, it totally disintegrated on Thursday. 5 days looks like the max it can be kept by that method, like a bouquet.
The key to this salsa is the long simmer, 2 hours minimally. I keep the heat as low as possible (with the lid on the first hour) and by the end the Hunt’s Diced Tomatoes (it will be the only brand I buy from now on – firm, flavorful chunks; not a sloppy mess indistinguishable from sauce) caramelize.
Yeah, and inspired by Texas Chili, brown sugar is added near the end. This time I may add tomato juice after all the cooking to make the liquor red and the tomato flavor a contrast of fresh tartness and mature sweetness . Those peppers = jalapenos, a lot of them, 10 in this recipe – the pasillas will spread out the pepper spectrum like a prism. This is some good stuff and I have no secrets (but I’ll also welcome suggestions).
5:45:24 PM
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Since Barbie and Ken have split up, I thought it would be nice to try and fix her up. The Bush Action Figure came to mind, but he’s already attached to the Laura Action Figure and one major breakup is all I can handle for a week. Golly, though, they would look so good together. The Rush Limbaugh Action Figure (“pop in a pill and out comes a lie”) is unattached, but he’s way too old for Barbie. It’s a big week in the news for same-sex partnerships and the Ann Coulter Action Figure would be topical, but maybe we should wait until the controversy subsides so they can get to know each other in a more peaceful atmosphere. Don’t think Mattel would go for that one anyway. They might like the increased profits that an Illuminated Ecstasy accessory would generate if she remains unattached, but costly lawsuits would likely follow when parents discovered what their children were shelling out the allowance dollars for. A nunnery, even one populated with some from Dr. Omed’s Nun Of The Week gallery, is out of the question. With Valentine’s Day on the horizon, she’s got to have a little romance in her life or, minimally be getting a little someplace. I won’t miss Ken, I never liked him, but if ever two dolls were made for each other it’s these two. Maybe they should just reconcile.
4:55:00 PM
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October Surprise
I’ve been trying to avoid quoting mainstream pundits like Paul Krugman since their columns are easily available to anyone who is interested, but today’s column contains a juicy tidbit which Krugman uncharacteristically avoids exploiting:
Just to give you a taste: remember how last year's budget contained no money for postwar Iraq — and how administration officials waited until after the tax cut had been passed to mention the small matter of $87 billion in extra costs? Well, they've done it again: earlier this week the Army's chief of staff testified that the Iraq funds in the budget would cover expenses only through September.
This means another supplemental, like the $87 billion one last year, will have to be be approved just as interest in the elections is peaking, effectively making the elections a referendum on both the Iraq War and budget deficits. Pretty good timing, eh?
5:59:54 AM
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Thursday, February 12, 2004 |
Slip sliding away,
slip sliding away
And I know a father who had a son
He longed to tell him all the reasons for the things he’d done
He came a long way just to explain
He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping
Then he turned around and he headed home again
8:31:42 PM
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Don’t Ask Why
Run rabbit - run rabbit
Run! Run! Run!
Run rabbit - run rabbit
Run! Run! Run!
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Goes the farmer's gun.
Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run.
Run rabbit - run rabbit
Run! Run! Run!
Don't give the farmer his fun!
Fun! Fun!
He'll get by without his rabbit pie
So run rabbit - run rabbit
Run! Run! Run!
6:53:17 PM
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Blood And Oranges
I’m starting to see Seville Oranges in stores; February is the month! Unlike most other fruits, they are not available year round. Get ‘em while you can! If you Google them, you’ll mostly find marmalade recipes. That’s because they make the best marmalade, their bitter flavor marries perfectly with the sugar for nearly Oriental contrast. They might also be called “blood oranges” for the ruby colored flesh, maybe not, I’m no expert on oranges (yes, I could look it up). They’re expensive, but so is the best of everything.
I talked to Liz over on UK-land. She’s been to a couple of pubs (one features300 year old pews in a back room) and had some pub food, including fish and chips. The health care system over there really sucks and it’s probably a model for what ours will be like in about 10 years.
She was given an ETA of 48 hours to refill her Mum's prescription that consisted of precisely 3 words because it “would have to be rewritten.” I believe the rational is that care delayed is care that just might be denied. Extending time increases the possibility that the patient may just give up or, better still, give up the ghost - thereby saving money for “the plan.” This exploits a convenient loophole in the tenet “First do no harm” which applies only to physicians, not bureaucrats and elected politicians.
For the latter in particular, the obverse “Do harm first, then do it again” makes them more “electable” because taxpayers/voters experience ghoulish pleasure in pain and demise as long as it’s not their own – even though it will be, eventually.
6:10:09 PM
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New Evidence Proves Bush Flossed Regularly in 1973
The White House didn't release the medical records but did provide Bush's Jan. 6, 1973, dental records -- complete with dental chart -- from when he was stationed at Dannelly Air National Guard Base near Montgomery, Ala.
6:02:23 AM
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Wednesday, February 11, 2004 |
Powell Defends Decision To Go To War, Despite Any Apparent Rationale.
“It just felt good,” he testifies.
9:05:23 PM
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Steve Raker will occasionally send something that can’t wait until the next Virtual Occoquan <plug plug>. This “God is my co-pilot” testimonial is an example:
-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Raker
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2004 8:26 PM
To: Undisclosed-Recipient
Subject: Shit Gettin' Outta Hand
What I think of the action described below I've said in the subject line. Please pay a pinch of extra attention to the part where the pilot thought that God had a hand in fixing "a minor problem with the braking system". The pilot saw God's hand when the problem "disappeared". I kinda hope the mechanics are not quite so devout. ...."So, Joe, an airline jet mechanic, wow. That must be demanding work." "You'd think so yeah, but really not so much. God takes care of a lot of it."
Steve
**********************************************************
God and the American Airlines pilot
In an exclusive interview with Advocate.com, Capt. Roger Findiesen explains how God told him to preach to his passengers about Christianity on a Friday morning flight from Los Angeles to New York on February 6.
An Advocate.com exclusive posted February 10, 2004
"If you have five minutes, I'll tell you why I did it," American Airlines captain Roger Findiesen told Advocate.com as Flight 34 had all but emptied out after its arrival at New York's JFK Airport, on Friday, February 6. "I felt that God was telling me to say something [to the passengers]."
Findiesen is the pilot about whom CNN and other media have been reporting since Saturday; even The New York Times ran a story about how an American Airlines pilot, using the P.A. system before takeoff from Los Angeles International Airport on Friday morning, requested that Christians on his flight identify themselves.
As the plane sat immobile, waiting for its slot to take off, Findiesen asked Christian passengers to raise their hands and said that "everyone else on board" might want to "make good use" of the flight. The implication was that non-Christians should learn about the Christian faith from the passengers who had raised their hands.
Passenger Amanda Nelligan told WCBS-TV of New York that the pilot called non-Christians "crazy" and that his comments "felt like a threat," although other passengers remember the word "crazy" having been playfully applied to the Christians on board. Nelligan said she and several others aboard were so worried they tried to call relatives on their cell phones before flight attendants assured them they were safe and that people on the ground had been notified about the pilot's comments.
Findiesen's identity has been shielded by American Airlines, but the pilot spoke candidly to The Advocate and Advocate.com editor in chief Bruce C. Steele, who identified himself to the captain at the end of the flight. Findiesen then confirmed to Steele his identity, the spelling of his name, and that his home base is Washington, D.C. At no time did Findiesen mention homosexuality or say anything antigay. During the three- to five-minute interview, he was positive and upbeat and interested only in explaining the importance of witnessing about his faith.
What Findiesen said, as best the stunned passengers could recall once they were able to move about the cabin and confer after Flight 34 took off, was this: "I just got back from a mission," Findiesen said after making a routine announcement about the plane being second in line for takeoff. "You know, they say about half of Americans are Christians. I'd just like the Christians on board to raise their hands."
In the suddenly hushed coach section of the airplane, a few nervous passengers raised one hand, most no higher than shoulder level, none above tops of the seats.
"I want everyone else on board to look around at how crazy these people are," the pilot continued, with an intonation suggesting he was using the word "crazy" in a positive, even admiring manner. Evidently addressing the non-Christian passengers, he concluded that they could "make good use of [the flight], or you can read your paper and watch the movie."
The movie on the flight was Under the Tuscan Sun, with Diane Lane and Sandra Oh as Lane's lesbian best friend.
Findiesen did not directly ask Christians to witness, nor did he explicitly ask non-Christians to talk to the people he imagined were raising their hands, but the implication that he hoped such interactions would take place was clear, and he confirmed his desire to foster religious discussion in his interview with Advocate.com.
"I just wanted to give Christians a chance to talk about why they're Christians," he said, standing in the forward galley at the end of the flight as the final passengers departed. "I obviously couldn't go back there and address everyone directly, so I used the P.A.
"I just got back from a mission in Costa Rica," said Findiesen, a tall white man with neatly trimmed thick white hair and a mustache, both lightly peppered with black. "I felt that God was telling me to say something." He went on to explain that he felt God wanted him to witness to the passengers on his first flight upon returning to work for American Airlines after his mission. Despite this feeling, he said, he had decided not to say anything--but then he got another sign from God.
A minor problem with the plane's braking system had developed during final checks before takeoff, he said, a problem that might have grounded the aircraft, on which every seat was taken, in part because another American flight from Los Angeles to New York had been canceled that morning. But after a simple maneuver involving a power source, the braking problem inexplicably "disappeared," Findiesen said, and the plane was cleared for departure, and that's when he knew he had to use the P.A. system to talk about his Christian faith.
Flight attendants were inundated with questions and complaints, and the pilot came back on to the P.A. system a couple of hours into the flight to apologize: Not to the paying passengers, but to the flight attendants. "I'd just like to apologize to the flight attendants" for the remarks he had made before takeoff, he said over the P.A. He said he had heard the crew had "taken a little heat" for his witnessing and that he would be available at the end of the flight to answer any questions or hear any complaints himself.
He then apologized again to the flight attendants and ended his announcement.
Asked by Advocate.com whether he felt he should also have apologized to his passengers, Findiesen paused. "I felt bad for the flight attendants," he said. As for the passengers, he said that he felt making himself available to talk to them as they deplaned was sufficient.
Asked whether it was part of his job as an American Airlines pilot, trusted with the safety of hundreds of passengers, to witness about his faith from the cockpit, he said it was not. But, he asserted, "there's actually no regulation against doing what I did." He also reminded Steele that the plane was not moving at the time of his original announcement.
The case was handed over to the airline's personnel department for an investigation, American Airlines spokesman Tim Wagner said Sunday. "It falls along the lines of a personal level of sharing that may not be appropriate for one of our employees to do while on the job," he said.
Because of privacy issues, there would likely never be any announcement about what kind of punishment or reprimand the pilot may face, Wagner said.
While Findiesen repeated to Steele that he was sorry his fellow crew members had taken heat for his comments, he expressed no regret for having made them and no regret for not having apologized to the American Airlines customers he was serving on the flight. But, he added, "I won't do it again, if you want to make a big deal of it."
8:46:25 PM
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Okay, now the Theocrats want to amend the Constitution so that marriage is rigidly defined as one dude and one dudess living in the same house and doing <nudge-nudge> you-know-what (but we can’t really say) pretty much with each other exclusively.
Okay, conceded, it's only the Constitution.
Only about a million people have died to preserve its basic form for a century or two, but that was “before 9/11.” The Theocrats have already established that oral sex fits the definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” which are Constitutional grounds for Presidential impeachment - so why not extend the territory, sorta like Manifest Destiny? But what can they do with the dictionary, which has these troubling post-secondary definitions of “marriage?”
3. A close union: “the most successful marriage of beauty and blood in mainstream comics” (Lloyd Rose). 4. Games The combination of the king and queen of the same suit, as in pinochle
And that’s just “marriage” by itself – check out these unholy unions of “marriage" with another word:
Boston Marriage: A long-term, intimate, sometimes discreetly sexual relationship between two women. ETYMOLOGY: Perhaps after the devoted women pairs from Boston depicted in The Bostonians by Henry James.
Plural Marriage: see polygamy – (holy shit, Orrin! – the constituency’s been decimated!)
Mixed Marriage: Marriage between persons of different races or religions.
Companionate Marriage: A marriage in which the partners agree not to have children and may divorce by mutual consent, with neither partner responsible for the financial welfare of the other.
Civil Marriage: A marriage ceremony performed by a civil official.
Shotgun Marriage: A marriage that is forced or necessitated because of pregnancy. Also called shotgun wedding.
Open Marriage: A marriage in which the partners agree that each is free to engage in extramarital relationships.
White Marriage: A marriage without sexual relations.
Don't they realize how difficult it is to get words changed in the dictionary or The Bible?
7:46:31 PM
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Some Personal Stuff ("A Cow Don't Make Ham")
Most importantly, I really miss Liz. I stopped by her apartment tonight to pick up her mail and just sat down there for a while. She’ll be back at the end of February. I am forgetting how to talk other than in a work-related environment and even that is becoming difficult. My cats hardly recognize my voice around home because being an otherwise sane person I don’t talk to my computer, the TV, or the nightly chilidogs.
Oh how I savor those! The only rule of my chilidog diet is that I can cook anything I think of, but my diet is to consist solely of breakfast in the morning and a chili dog at night. The rest I share. It’s working because I really love chilidogs. There are nine unique cans of chili sauce on my counter, each waiting to be opened and evaluated as their turn comes.
I may give them names like George I, James II, and maybe even Henry VIII – or better, descriptive names like “ George The Terrifier, Richard The Humpbacked Chili Sauce, or Frederick The Conqueror Capsaicin.” Each can yields sufficient chili for 3 chili dogs (two heaping tablespoons) and the nightly ritual begins around 7pm: A Nathan’s all-beef is immersed in simmering water and covered, the chili sauce is reduced slowly in simmering water, two thin slices of onion are finely chopped and packed into the crevice of a bun, which is closed and sealed – let those onions fume into the bun!
About an hour later, it’s time for assembly and ornamentation with French’s mustard. The completed chilidog is savored with great relish, but no pickle relish (maybe some grated cheddar). With minor deviations (I had bratwurst last night and snacked on homemade salsa (the recipe will be posted here and distributed at work – it is incredibly good)), this is what I’ve been doing for the last 6 weeks or so. The eternal chili was finished a week or so ago, so that’s why the canned stuff is being tested now. From peak weight at the beginning of the chilidog diet to low weight recorded yesterday, sixteen pounds have gone away. When six more go, I’ll start drinking beer again. I feel weak and stupid, foggy, bipolar, but mostly happy.
Some incredible stuff going on at work (victory, stress, failure, elation, distraction) - wish I could talk about it here in detail, wish Liz were here to discuss it within confidence. Twyla doesn’t seem to care (occasionally, even a sane person must talk to their pets just to practice speaking). On the bright side, while I’ve typed this, I’ve ripped about 10 Zappa CDs for The World’s First Complete Wireless Zappa Jukebox. With 40 CDs converted to MP3, I’m about halfway through the FZ oeuvre.
“Oh,” you might ask, but probably not (I can’t blame you if you don’t give a shit, after al, this is titled “Some Personal Stuff”), “With all that Zappa shit in your head and on your computer, what is your favorite Zappa composition?”
It would be Strictly Genteel. It first appeared in Zappa’s first movie, 200 Motels, sung by Theodore Bikel. Some hilarious lines, like:
Lord, have mercy on the people in England,
For the terrible food these people must eat.
Which open it. It has appeared on multiple Zappa CDs and compilations, with the unique conceptual continuity clue that it was the last track. Once, in 1998, when I was fortunate enough to have a brief conversation with Mike Keneally (stunt guitarist in Zappa’s last touring band in 1988), he asked me which was my favorite version. Then it was the LSO Orchestra version, but it has since changed. Now my favorite version is the one recorded live with the 1988 band on Make A Jazz Noise Here. That’s because of a casual mention Keneally made on alt.fan.frank-zappa about an unusual fill they used in this section near close:
Help the black man.
Help the poor man.
Help the milkman.
Help the door man.
Help the lonely, neglected old farts that I know.
As a joke, the band started singing (or at least thinking) "Batman!" instead of “black man” during rehearsals. Then they started playing the 1960s Batman theme right after. They dropped the “Batman” but kept the theme, a funny fact he shared. I listened to the track and didn’t hear it until about the 5th try – it was speeded up, 32nd notes instead of 8th notes like the original – a microburst, nearly subliminal!
So I asked him how they expected anyone to hear that. He said they didn’t, it was a band joke. But Frank heard it. He heard everything, he recorded everything, and if it was really good he made ‘em do it in the movie.
5:38:17 PM
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Tuesday, February 10, 2004 |
And Bobby Dylan Has A song…
They say ev’rything can be replaced,
Yet ev’ry distance is not near.
So I remember ev’ry face
Of ev’ry man who put me here.
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east.
Any day now, any day now,
I shall be released.
They say ev’ry man needs protection,
They say ev’ry man must fall.
Yet I swear I see my reflection
Some place so high above this wall.
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east.
Any day now, any day now,
I shall be released.
Standing next to me in this lonely crowd,
Is a man who swears he’s not to blame.
All day long I hear him shout so loud,
Crying out that he was framed.
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east.
Any day now, any day now,
I shall be released.
9:11:57 PM
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Whatever He Did, He Got PAID For It, So Let's Cultivate An Interest In FACTS!
"These documents make it very clear that the president of the United States fulfilled his duties," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "When you serve, you are paid for that service, and these documents outline the day he was paid."
The report stated Bush had been performing "equivalent training" at a Guard unit in Montgomery, Alabama.
The White House also released previously seen records of Bush's "point summaries" from the Texas Air National Guard. And White House officials released a letter from former Texas Air National Guard Personnel Director Albert Lloyd, stating the president had the required number of "points" for the year in question.
"I think there are some that we are now seeing are not interested in the facts," McClellan said
8:23:23 PM
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“Me Too” Kerry Releases Military Records
A graduate of Yale University, John Kerry entered the Navy after graduation, becoming a Swift Boat officer, serving on a gunboat in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. He received a Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, and three awards of the Purple Heart for his service in combat.
However, he has so far declined to release his pay records, which would provide indisputable proof that he was compensated for his efforts. Neither have any records of his "points" or "equivalent training" been released. Is he hiding something? Has he lost interest in the facts?
8:02:50 PM
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“Tupperware fart” added to the vocabulary here:
Thursday, February 06, 2003
you know he's a keeper when you're reunited after a long absence and the way your heart knows it's him is that your two bodies still make those particular tupperware fart sounds whenever you rub up together.
oh, goodness gracious. i'm done for.
Also here:
Phranc just went on with her story, nicely presenting her tupperware asortment one by one. At one hillarious moment, when Donny and Marie were fighting wether tupperware fart or whisper, Phranc shot them down acting like a mother.
And here as well:
G Ras (GRas@PunkAss.com) -- 12.17.2002
He carefully put the lid on and waited for the patented Tupperware "burp". That is funny... it was actually a Tupperware fart....Arrrgh!! G Ras
And, on Slate, Amanda Fortini reviews the PBS Documentary, Tupperware!
6:51:15 PM
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The Cilantro is yellowing a bit at the fringes, but it’s still usable. I’ve been changing the water daily.
I took the Tarla Dalal magazine in to work today and a wonderful synchronicity occurred. When I subscribed, my thoughts went back to JB who used to work with us until the monster layoffs last year. She is an expert on Indian food and would bring in tasty chicken curries for departmental potlucks. She is a warm and energetic person, always positive, and I’ve missed her.
Well, today she shows up to visit! She still hasn’t found a job, but remains completely upbeat. She chatted at length with all her former co-workers and I was able to “surprise” her with the Tarla Dalal magazine. Amazingly, she recognized many people pictured in it as Indian food superstars. She agreed it was an overpriced magazine, but maybe worth it. As a joke, I wanted to show her the recipe for refried beans which follows, saying that was one of my favorite Indian foods, but I got involved in a hard drive rescue project before I could.
The giveaway line in this recipe, out of context, is “Robust rajma provides the perfect fill.” They are meant as one suggested filling for chapattis (the Tarla Dalal recipe uses a 50/50 mixture of wheat and white flour) along with Aloo Gobi, spicy green peas, a corn, pepper, cheese mixture with chilies, paneer, and tomato, and hariyali paneer. Some funny stuff on the next page: one chapatti is placed in a skillet, covered with fillings, and another chapatti is placed atop. The next line says, “And there, a ‘tagda’ paratha-quesadilla is ready!” (Maybe a “NAFTA quesadilla” is a better description). Here’s the refried bean filling:
Refried Beans
Robust rajma provides the perfect fill
MAKES 6
½ cup rajma (red kidney beans) soaked overnight
1 cup chopped tomatoes
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 green chili, finely chopped
½ cup chopped onions
½ tsp chili powder
½ tsp roasted cumin seed powder
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp oil
salt to taste
1. Combine the beans, tomatoes, garlic, green chilies and half the onions and pressure-cook till the beans are done. Drain. Keep aside the drained water.
2. Heat the oil and fry the remaining onions for 1/2 a minute.
3. Add the beans mixture, chili powder, cumin seed powder, sugar, butter and salt and cook for 2 to 3 minutes.
4. Mash the beans coarsely.
5. If the mixture is dry, add the drained water and mix well.
6:10:23 PM
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Just got the first issue from Tarla Dalal and it is a miracle. Do I mind that I pay double the cover price just for shipping from India?
Hell No! This is in English and it shipped from half a world away and it fills my mind’s pantry with exotic foodie thoughts light-eons beyond those that inspired Cristobal Colon to world-class history-altering adventure in search of spice.
That’s a bargain for North Carolina hillbilly in the 21st century.
3:12:36 AM
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Monday, February 09, 2004 |
The new Virtual Occoquan is up and ready, just waiting for you to pulll the trigger releasing the firing pin to impact upon the firing cap, discharging a volume of rapidly expanding gases which will, in turn, ignite a common black powder composite of mutually flammable elements, creating a back pressure which will force a rifled silver projectile through a rifled barrel and impart sufficient muzzle velocity to propel said projectile directly into the soul of werewolf incompetence. Fight Evil Creatures, go to Virtual Occoquan right now.
8:27:54 PM
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ARF!
(disciplinary unit, hmmm...)
7:20:13 PM
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Why The Ohio State-Michigan Rivalry Is The Most Serious
The Wolverines tried to steal Toledo in 1835! What happened was that an impetuous 22 year old twit named Stevens T. Mason led a haphazard army of 250 hebetudinous poltroons in a craven attempt at a land grab remarkably similar to Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Fortunately for the Wolverines no shots were fired or punches thrown, because their inherent cowardice would have been quickly demonstrated on the battlefield (Michigan did suffer one casualty – a quick-witted Buckeye knew that the place to find the enemy was to check out the bars, where they would be getting predictably liquored up and generally acting like jerks. He found one and stabbed him before he could run away. Their running game has a long history of ineffectiveness).
US President Andrew Jackson eventually settled the dispute by booting Mason out of office and granting Ohio back the land that cross-eyed Michigan surveyors had drunkenly and erroneously tried to claim. Were it not for Jackson’s intuitive grasp of the situation, both Steve Raker and Sister Bubbles would now be living in Michigan, which would be all right as long as they cheered for the Buckeyes.
The map here came from the book The Great Black Swamp by Jim Mollenkopf. It has a whole chapter on The Toledo War. You can also read about it at this official Michigan site, where the impetuous twit is merely called “feisty,” and no mention is made of the multiple venereal diseases responsible for his deranged behavior. The line right below Steve is where Michigan claimed. It’s called Fulton’s Line after John A. Fulton and the county that Steve lives in is now called Fulton County.
5:48:21 PM
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Sunday, February 08, 2004 |
Just diggin' it, happy as a pig in shit
6:25:38 AM
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Saturday, February 07, 2004 |
Cilantro Bouquet
9:33:09 PM
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Listening to this CD right now. I ripped it with the dbPowerAMP plugin for CDs, onto a folder on my desktop, then dragged the folder into the “My Music” subfolder of “My Documents.” The software included with the ew5000 immediately recognized the change and synchronized with the wireless receiver, allowing me to play it on my stereo. While this may not seem as effortless as removing the CD from the jewel case and putting it in the CD player, I will never again have to do that for this album.
The Flatlanders formed in 1971, led by Jimmie Dale Gilmore, putting together an album that didn’t get released until 1972, then as an 8-track that finally got some attention around 1980 in England. Gilmore hit the bigtime in the 1990s. In 1997, the group regrouped to record South Wind Of Summer for the movie The Horse Whisperer – though they did release More A Legend Than A Band in 1990, but it got minimal attention. Now there are two more CDs, Now Again from 2002 and this one, Wheels Of Fortune, released January 27, 2004.
8:38:34 PM
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I Don’t Get It - II
We bombed the fuck outta Iraq because we merely suspected they were getting that exotic-sounding yellowcake from Niger. Thousands of Iraqi civilians died for this and at least 500 American soldiers. We were wrong, they didn’t have any, but we did have a Fox News boom-boom wet dream, these colors didn’t run, and no blue dress required dry cleaning.
Meanwhile, over in Pakistan, top nuclear scientist/hero Abdul Qadeer Khan admits to promiscuously selling nuke-le-yar (rhymes with “cellular,” as in “cellular phone explosion”) secrets to Libya, Iran, and North Korea. The only US response is silence and in Pakistan the exoneration of a national hero is universally cheered.
Still meanwhile, in Algeria, a Saudi Arabian (where the inbred royalty sponsored the 9/11 terrorist attacks) ambassador is summoned to explain why Abbas Madani, chairman of the Islamic front for salvation (that’s a terrorist front), was honored in “an official reception attended by the Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz.”
You got all those names down?
Doesn’t matter, my point is that we’ve been bombing the fuck outta the wrong difficult-to-pronounce places.
5:09:34 AM
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I Don’t Get It
Justin violently exposed Janet’s tit and now we’re ostracizing her? Justin will show up for the Grammys as though nothing happened at all, but Janet is forced into self-imposed exile. How can anyone, even if they have the name “Jackson” to make you think of Jesse and Michael, prevent accidental tit exposure other than by radical mastectomy? Why does Justin The Perp just “walk?” What is the message for our children? Is this a threat to Homeland Security?
4:24:04 AM
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Janet The Sacred Cow
This weathered photo is a family icon. I didn’t “get it” the first time Dad whipped it out at one of those neighborly visits (people used to come over to “visit”). It broke the ice, loosened people up. There would be a spontaneous uproar of adult mirth, howls of laughter which I didn’t understand; to me it was just a cow with a misplaced udder. I knew what tits were, but to me they were just the way young animals got milk – something you saw daily on a farm. It was not until graduation into adolescence that I learned that tits were also a fetish, an object of fascination, of worship. Then puberty came and I understood. Giggle.
Thanks to Sister Bubbles for this scan!
3:59:09 AM
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Friday, February 06, 2004 |
Alive Alive Oh
Here’s a BBC recipe for steamed cockles. I’ve never seen a cockle, never eaten one, never even saw one on the menu. According to the Epicurious Food Dictionary, “They have a tendency to be quite gritty and must be washed thoroughly to rid them of sand,” which probably accounts for their dismal popularity in the US.
Even less appetizing: Pacific Coast cockles are likely to contain saxitoxins, which have been linked to PSP (Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning), the less evil-sounding ASP (Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning), as well as the downright folksy "Bitter Crab Disease."
But in the UK, they are harvested fearlessly (albeit by slave labor) even as Mad Cow Paranoia shrouds the kingdom, enveloping it with fear levels comparable to that of The Blitz. The culprit is the quaint Romanticism in that silly Irish folk tune about fishmonger Molly Malone and her stupid little wheel barrow. People have died for dumber things.
6:22:45 PM
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Thursday, February 05, 2004 |
We Want Tits! (And art too, of course)
I’m co-editor of this week’s Virtual Occoquan and it’s gonna be a very special issue!
It will be the 50th issue to appear online and that’s a genuine tribute to the perseverance and artistry of VO’s creator, Mark Hoback. The Oscars have been nominated, so if you have anything to say about that, let us know.
And the Grammy award ceremonies will be this weekend. Justin will be there and maybe even Janet and both her tits, not just the famous right one! It will be broadcast on a five-hour delay, so in case the whole thing turns into an unstoppable group orgy involving the cream of today’s talent, audience members, and Osama bin Laden’s camel, CBS can stop the action justin time to maximize ratings and buzz while simultaneously minimizing predictable reaction from Mikey “I think he likes it!” Powell and the religious right. After all, if CBS has to cancel the whole thing they might be forced to dig into the vault and run The Reagans (or a MoveOn commercial) after all.
What does all this this mean to you, a casual reader who probably only came here because Google or Booble led you here just because I said “tits?”
Well, Mark and I am interested in your input for the Golden Issue - on music, movies, art, literature, poetry, and, of course, tits. Mark has kinda shied away from thematic issues of VO of late, but I’m certain if we get a groundswell of informational articles on tits, which is highly likely given the psyche of the current news cycle, we’ll examine them in the spirit of that great old political song, Hey Look Me Over.
If you can imagine Charlton Heston, in The Ten Commandments, parting the Red Sea with his tremulous staff, with those walls of frothing water towering over the children of Israel, then suddenly dunking his schnozzle into a pair of monstrous boobies and delivering the deranged burlesque-inspired Oscar line, “Bluh bluh bluh bluh buh buh bububu bubububub boobooboo,” then you have an understanding of the quality of material we’re seeking for this special issue.
Now, if you’re old-fashioned, don’t be concerned. You don’t have to write about pierced titties in fancy bustiers (ain’t that a new word and a half!).
No, you can write about monstrous tits smothering you or “your partner” in an orgasmic frenzy, or the itty-bitty tittles you savor like your last Oreo, even your own tits - or tits covered with butter, ice cream, sprinkles; pig tits, marsupial tits in pockets like pita bread, cow teats, gorillas in the tits – just as long as it’s done tastefully in the sober patriotic context of flatulent animals, overpaid athletes, super-hype, and crotch-biting dogs we've come to expect of American rituals.
Of course, if you’d rather write about something else, we’d like to see that too. It will get special attention if your opening sentence uses the word “tit” more than 11 times, but try to avoid successive usage. Cretin restrictions might apply, consult your Oracle and user’s guide, illegal in some states, and Big Brother is watching. Join in on the fun! This is a special issue and, really, much as we like tits, we’d like some submissions about movies and music. Post on your blog and send a link, or just send an article, to Mark or myself. Peace.
8:42:25 PM
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Christine Frka
A member of the GTOs and the model on this immortal Hot Rats album cover. She recommended to Frank Zappa that he record Alice Cooper. She was also the subject of The Byrds’ song Christine’s Tune, aka Devil In Disguise and appeared in the 1971 Zappa movie 200 Motels. She died of a drug overdose in 1972.
Hot Rats was Zappa’s first album without the Mothers. The art was done by Cal Shenkel, and John Luc-Ponty joined in on the fun for the first time. So did Captain Beefheart for the immortal Willie The Pimp track. It’s the last Zappa CD I’m ripping tonight for my new “jukebox.” I’ve already done Freak Out!, Absolutely Free, We’re Only In It For The Money, Lumpy Gravy, Ruben & The Jets, and Uncle Meat – but who cares about that except me?
Once you get this wireless receiver set up (whew!), it is a whole lot of fun. I’m still on the chili dog diet, Liz is in England, and fun is rare right now. I’m evaluating various brands of grocery store chili, but suspect they’re all made in the same place. The stuff in those little 10-ounce cans has a certain grunge appeal, especially when you haven’t eaten all day, but I suspect the homemade variety – and maybe the stuff in tubular plastic wrap like sausage – will taste the best. There might be an art to making chili dogs when that’s all you make for a month or two, kinda like mustard painting on ham canvas for sandwiches, sort of a folk art variation on edible art. Preliminary recommendation: Chop the onions and tamp them into the crevice of the bun. Close it up and let the onion essence permeate the bun for an hour or two while the wienie steams and the chili heats up. Allow the onion to become more than just a friend to the bun.
7:06:40 PM
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Even though it’s only morning and I should have left for work by now, I’ve just ripped the first ever Zappa CD to the playlist for the wireless receiver. A single step. There are more than 60 Zappa CDs to follow. Yes, I have them all, I’m one of those Hungry Freaks, Daddy (which is the title of the first track on the first CD).
6:47:30 AM
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Wednesday, February 04, 2004 |
It was after only an hour and a half that I got this beautiful screen display from the HP ew5000 digital receiver on my TV. It was three hours later that I was finally able to listen. First, I haven’t used my D-Link DI-614+ wireless 802.11b router for months and it turned out its configuration was fucked so I had to set it up again. Pretty straightforward, but it took me a while to verify a connection with my ThinkPad, which has been hard-wired into the network before today. Neighbors’ routers were giving me bogus connections (if you have a wireless router, be sure to set an admin password, mask your SSID and use 128-bit encryption for your WEP because there are assholes like me out there who will fuck with your settings just for a giggle), but I eventually got hooked up. But then, even though I could see the files on the remote computer (where I have my music and photos), I got an useless “unable to play” error when I punched down on the Fountains of Wayne tracks and none of the photos would display. I wired into the Ethernet port and watched with the video capture card on the remote computer, which by now was right in front of me, but I still couldn’t access any files. I tried sharing the relevant folders, but apparently the included software overrides that. Frightening. More frightening, next time I successfully powered up the ew5000 receiver connected to the TV, it went out and grabbed a firmware update from the Internet and flashed itself even though the procedure at the HP website strongly recommends using only a wired connection to do that. Sunuvabitch just went out to HP all by itself and flashed itself, talk about security worries. Anyway about 10 minutes ‘til 9pm, with a flash macromedia update and server update from HP, I was able to get the files to play. In the meantime, I tortured myself by setting down the remote in nearly impossible places to find so I could walk around looking stupid while I awaited the next test. Could get it to say it was playing, but there was no sound Aha! – I forgot to connect the audio cables to the wireless receiver. I definitely have a Bright Future In Sales – but it’s working now. That’s the ew5000 there atop the TV, just to the left of the robot cat.
9:15:37 PM
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Tuesday, February 03, 2004 |
That "Play your harmonica, son" originated with Lightnin' Slim: :
While riding a bus, Lester was excited to meet a Bluesman that he admired who was searching for Wild Bill Phillips to record with. That man was Lightnin' Slim. Lester convinced him that he could play better harmonica and Slim gave him the opportunity. From that point on when Lightnin' Slim uttered his signature, "play your harmonica son"; he was referring to Lazy Lester. He became a mainstay at producer
8:25:01 PM
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“Smell your harmonica, go on smell it, son”
It’s also the birthday of the man who said those immortal lines, Johnny “Guitar” Watson. He was a major influence on Frank Zappa, who loved the earlier recording where it was delivered as “Play your harmonica, son.” In Frank’s unapologetically Francophobe anthem, In France, Watson introduced the harmonica solo (played by Bobby Martin!) with the hilarious variation. For a little context, dedicated to last year’s incredibly unimaginative Francophobes, check out these two verses:
They got some coffee,
Eatin' right through the cup,
An' when they go ka-ka
They make you stand up
In France
Way down in France
Way on down
Way on down
In France
If you're not careful,
It'll stick to your cheeks
You'll smell like a native
For a couple of weeks
In France
Way down in France
Way on down
Way on down
In France
7:21:44 PM
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Brian Jones Returns From Death, Disses Hutton Report
As Mr Blair yesterday set up an inquiry into intelligence failures before the war, Brian Jones...declared that Downing Street's dossier, a key plank in convincing the public of the case for war, was "misleading" about Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological capability.
Meanwhile, back in the USA, savvy pols are desperately attempting to resuscitate Jerry Garcia to poke some holes in the intelligence investigation over here, should they inadvertently blame anyone besides Bill Clinton. Garcia could easily prove that Bush was not fibbing about the WMDs, but was merely hallucinating them as the result of an acid flashback, that "brown acid" Wavy Gravy warned us about.
6:51:10 PM
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Okay, after I gave up trying to figure out whose birthday was being commemorated by Google – not Fran Tarkenton, not Gertrude Stein, certainly not Nathan Lane, I finally got a hint at Scope Systems – maybe it’s Pavel Urysohn. Well, it’s not. I dragged the mouse pointer over the Google banner and learned they are commemorating Gaston Julia. I’m also wishing a happy birthday to my brother today!
5:35:53 PM
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Monday, February 02, 2004 |
Meet Robert Martin
Here he is singing an ass-kicking cadenza at the end of a Zappa concert at “The Pier NYC USA 26th August 1984,” aka Does Humor Belong In Music? On an earlier tour, some savvy fan screamed out “Whippin’ Post” at concert’s end, a reference to what had become an Allman Brothers concert cliché. Zappa was uncharacteristically humiliated that his top-notch band couldn’t just “whip it out,” so every band from that day on had Whippin’ Post in the repertoire.
And nobody ever sang it better than Bobby Martin. All true Zappa fans know he is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, a classically-trained French horn player who also can wail on the sax, keyboards, and vocals. In the world of musicianship, where fools rush in and angels fear to tread, he walks confidently on the clouds as though they were solid ground. He married Cybill Shepherd and produced an album for her. This is the last information, from 1998, that I’ve heard from him, probably posted on alt.fan.frank-zappa:
from: robert martin (ramusic10@aol.com)
dear everybody,
i had no idea this information about me was floating around on the web until my best friend from high school e-mailed me about it. it's great to see ongoing interest in fz's music and alumnae.
the discography is mostly correct and includes a few things i had forgotten about. yes, there is another bobby martin from philly who arranged many of the sessions i played french horn on at sigma sound in the early 70's. i'm proud to have played on so many hit records from that era, songs like backstabbers, love train, money, money, betcha by golly wow, me and mrs jones, etc., etc... laura nyro and the osmonds never happened. that must have been the other bobby martin. anyway, i've been "robert" since the '88 zappa tour.
i'm currently music editor for baywatch...hey, it pays the bills!
and i am working on a few other projects and my own music, but i'm sorry to say it won't be out anytime soon. it will include some philosophical content based on years of studying my favorite writer, ayn rand.
yes, i split with cybill shepherd in october of '98 (major political and philosophical differences) and a year later happily reconnnected with my former wife, patsy pease. i'm happy to be a full time husband and father again. thanks for being there, i really appreciate it!
having just discovered this series of web pages, i'm waxing quite nostalgic about my tenure with frank from '81 'till the end. i particularly remember the new york pier 11 show as being an incredibly fun show. the dependence on cheezy early digital synths was unfortunate but it was more than made up for by the best vocal band in my experience with frank. it was the only time that i got to sing with both ray and ike at the same time, which cut down on my leads a bit, but we had killer range, power and blend.
here's some more info for the discography: i played french horn on just about everything that had horn on it that came out of sigma studios from 1969 through 1974. i don't know exact dates or album titles, but here's the list of artists: the stylistics, delphonics, o'jays, spinners, billy paul, harold melvin & the bluenotes, teddy pendergrass, major harris, connie stevens (it's true), and some others i don't remember. records of the session dates and players probably exist, but i don't have them.
i also arranged and overdubbed entire french horn sections and sax sections on the moody blues "octave" album after moving to california. i played off and on with etta james for 14 years in between other tours, including opening for the rolling stones 1978 u.s. tour. we also played at numerous jazz and blues festivals like monterey, atlanta, montreux, northsea, etc. there are probably videos and bootlegs floating around of some of those concerts. with etta i also did midnight special with george benson, dr. john and van morrison, and i know there's a video of that.
i toured briefly with michael mcdonald and did the tonight show, soul train, and american bandstand with him in 1986 (all on video somewhere). one other major career highlight was singing "hey jude" with paul mccartney at the hollywood bowl. it was somewhere around '93 or so, and i was there singing backgrounds for kenny loggins, and paul asked everyone to join him at the end. when it was over, paul, who didn't know me from adam, looked across the stage at me and came over and shook my hand before greeting the rest of the singers. i'm sure someone somewhere has a picture of that. it was almost as good as playing with frank!
i've got more information and anecdotes, but this is not the kind of keyboard i'd like to be tapping right now. i'll save more goodies for later.
again, thanks to all for keeping the flame.
robert martin
p.s. yes, that's me on the philinganes album.
2:40:50 PM
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D'var Torah
Once again, a simple comment here has directed me to some profound online thoughts.
9:53:48 AM
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Sunday, February 01, 2004 |
Texas Chlili #2
8:16:12 PM
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Calvin And Hajj
Why do we insist on bombing these people to slaughter them, at enormous taxpayer expense, when all that is necessary is to give them 7 rocks to hurl at a statue of Satan?
The Saudi minister responsible for the hajj, Iyad Madani, told a press conference yesterday that at least seven pilgrims were in a critical condition.
"All precautions were taken to prevent such an incident, but this is God's will," he said. "Caution isn't stronger than fate."
7:25:12 PM
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Friend Or Foe - If You’re Not Me, You’re A Liability
Close associates of Tony Blair fear that the Prime Minister is on the point of being hung out to dry by President George Bush over the issue of whether Iraq held weapons of mass destruction when Britain and the US went to war last March.
6:18:07 PM
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I’m doing a variation of the David Rosengarten Real Texas Chili recipe (which appears in It’s All American Food) to celebrate the first-ever time the Carolina Panthers have appeared in the Super Bowl. Here are his ingredients:
2 ounces dried chiles
1 ½ teaspoons cumin seeds, toasted in a pan until fragrant, then ground
¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/3 pound beef suet, diced, or 1/3-cup vegetable oil
2 ½ pounds bonesless beef chuck, trimmed of excess fat and cut into ¾-inch cubes (about 2 pounds after trimming)
¼ cup finely chopped onion
1 tablespoon minced garlic
2 cups unsalted beef broth (homemade or canned)
2 cups water
2 tablespoons masa harina
1 tablespoon firmly packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon distilled white vinegar
I made this a week or so ago and really screwed up by not pulverizing the skins well enough because I used a food processor instead of a blender. Basically, you roast the peppers in a hot pan then cover them with very hot, not boiling water for 30 minutes. Next step, you drain them and remove the stems and seeds. I’m leaving the seeds in this time. Then you put them in the blender with the cumin, pepper, and a little salt, adding water to make a paste.
Today, on A Splendid Table, Lynne Rossetto Kasper was discussing the peppers of Spain with Ari Weinzweig and, in passing, they agreed it was a mistake to rinse peppers after you roast them, even though it makes them easier to peel, because a lot of flavor goes down the drain. This recipe for Texas chili has you soak them and it also calls for 2 cups of water – hmmmm, why not put that soaking water in the chili?
I’ll be using the veal broth made yesterday instead of beef broth, tripling the onion to ¾ cup, tripling the garlic too. Another addition will be coriander, roasted right along with the cumin, for the chili paste – about an equal amount for starters.
The recipe calls for rendering the suet in boiling water, but I’ll be using the vegetable oil (I’d prefer the suet, but it’s too difficult to find). Then you brown the chuck roast cubes in small amounts. Lower the heat and cook the onion and garlic in the same pan, adding more oil if necessary and stir in the broth, water, masa harina, and chili paste – making sure you scrape all the goody bits that stuck to the bottom of the pan.
Add the beef, boil, then reduce heat and simmer 2 hours. Finally, during the last 10 minutes of cooking you add the brown sugar and vinegar. Then you let it rest about 30 minutes so the beef absorbs more liquid. Correct the thickness and seasoning as needed, reheat gently, and serve.
3:46:51 PM
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Just discovered a great set of maps online for finding places in Tokyo! The one here, aoyama, is from this page and has enough information to locate Maisen, that “second most famous” tonkatsu restaurant. From the superfuturecity site, you can also hit similar maps of daikanyama, harajuku, shibuya, and marunouchi – as well as similar maps for New York and Sydney.
2:44:11 PM
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Small World
Occasionally, a comment shows up here that reminds me how neighborly our global village web really is. Last week, I posted a blog entry about how an Andy Raskin piece on NPR had prompted me to do a little Google research on Ramen Jiro. Later in the week, I learned I would be going to Tokyo twice later in the year, and posted another entry on how excited I was to have a chance to visit Ramen Jiro in person.
Then this week, Andy Raskin himself posted a comment on that blog entry with detailed instructions on how to find the original Ramen Jiro. These are greatly appreciated since buildings in Tokyo are not numbered in any system that will help you find them. You either need a map or someone to show you the way. I’m posting Andy’s directions here to help anyone else find the way. Thanks, Andy!
By the way, Andy also has other of his NPR stories on his site, including another about Tokyo that caught my attention when it was broadcast last September, Tokyo “All Aboard” Melodies. Here are the directions to Ramen Jiro:
Glad to hear the piece sparked your interest in Jiro, and that you'll have a chance to visit. Yes, their owner has now franchised out the name in the last few years, but you want to go to the original, which is in the Mita section of Tokyo, next to Keio University (the alma mater of my friend Masa, who tells the story in the piece). To get there, take the JR to Tamachi Station, or the Toei Mita subway line to Mita station, then ask people where Keio's main entrance is. Facing the entrance, go along the big street to your left (toward the gas station). If it's lunchtime, you'll see people in line. Hours are 10-4 Mon-Sat. but he closes early if he runs out of noodles. Here's a map in Japanese. If you don't speak Japanese, I recommend going with someone who does, because ordering is more complicated than I had time to describe in the radio piece. There's a whole code language around toppings, and you have to buy a ticket beforehand from a vending machine to describe your order. The code language is not written anywhere, but is explained, again in Japanese here. If it's in the summer, take a towel with you to wipe off your sweat/noodle splatter. I recommend starting with the small :) Let me know how it goes!
Sometimes when we go to Tokyo, we meet up with John, an American who has lived there for the past 7 years or so. He does speak Japanese and has always been very helpful as a “tour guide.” He introduced “us” to okonomiyaki and tonkatsu on a previous visit. A trip to Taira’s (first rate okonomiyaki!), where John designed the menus, is a must stop on every trip. We can pig out there and have a few beers for around $20 – a genuine bargain price for dinner in Tokyo. My favorite tonkatsu place (though you can find it at nearly any large subway station) is Meisen in Shibuya-ku. You have to love a place that is billed, with a straight-faced pride, as “Tokyo’s second most famous tonkatsu restaurant.” I’ve never been to Tonki, which is the “most famous,” whatever that means.
UPDATE: I just found this map, in English, of Keio University in Mita. A full-sized subway map of Tokyo, shrunk above, is available here.
9:52:47 AM
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I’ll take “Celebrity Fuckups” for $200…
A: Game show host who recently fell asleep at the wheel, sideswiped a string of mailboxes with his pickup, and plummeted into a ravine near his horse farm.
Q: Alex Trebek
…Sorry, you must phrase it in the form of a question in Double Jeopardy.
12:54:00 AM
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