No excuse.
So how is it that Dean, who has a million things going on at once, has time to write a worthwhile post, while I can barely find the energy to generate video links? This poor blog is a shadow of its former self. Has it come to this, that I need to start rerunning past hits, perhaps the Camel Toe extravaganza or some of the Cosmo 13s? Or would the stench of desperation become asphyxiating?
Here. This was good for a few laughs. Heaven knows I can’t seem to manage any these days.
D.
I love this guy
Alan Grayson, you are a hero.
Sadly, he was targeted by the Right with Citizens United money, and he lost his election. I hope he will be back soon — we need this man.
D.
It’s freaking reboantic, I tells ya
Jake’s reading Dante’s Inferno for school (and to digress before I’ve yet to ingress, why do English teachers love Inferno so much? The only thing I can recall about Dante’s Inferno: one of my English teacher’s husband’s ancestors appeared in the book, or at least someone with his name appeared in the book, probably for the sin of shagging tiresome old AP English teachers) and came across the word reboantic.
Before I enlighten you as to the meaning of reboantic, I’d like to say that I have no hatred for obscure words. Obscure words are fun. Obscure words were the only redeeming feature (features?) of Reginald Hill’s Dialogues of the Dead, a book I otherwise detested. Hey, I like knowing that a zyzzogeton is a large South American leaf hopper. And so does Ammon Shea, author of Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages. Which sounds like a fun read, or at least a better read than the OED.
Reboantic: reverberant.
Know what pisses me off about reboantic? It has the same number of syllables as reverberant. Then why the hell didn’t the translator use reverberant? I do recognize that reboantic has its accent on the third syllable, reverberant on the second, so perhaps reverberant didn’t scan as well. But isn’t there something to be said about avoiding a word that sends its reader scurrying to the nearest internet dictionary, thus disrupting the reading experience?
Or did the translator really expect us to know reboantic, a word I’ve never seen before in my life?
As the fool says all the time in Christopher Moore’s Fool (a ripping good read): Fuckstockings.
Find that in your OED.
D.
I solved the Federal budget deficit!
The New York Times has a cool graphic wherein you make a variety of choices in order to solve the Federal budget deficit. I did it and had a surplus left over, all without hurting the poor and middle class and the elderly.
Here’s what I did:
I eliminated earmarks and farm subsidies.
I made all of the suggested military reductions.
Yes on medical malpractice reform (you thought I’d choose otherwise?)
I reduced Social Security benefits for those with high incomes.
I returned the estate tax to Clinton-era levels.
I returned the investment tax to Clinton-era levels.
I allowed the Bush tax cuts to expire for those earning over $250K.
Yes to “payroll tax: Subject some incomes above $106,000 to tax” (and I probably have enough of a surplus to ease that one somewhat).
Yes to “Millionaire’s tax on income above $1 million ” and “Eliminate loopholes, but keep taxes slightly higher”
Yes to the carbon tax and bank tax.
Et voila, the poor, elderly, and middle class are mostly unscathed, and I have a budget surplus, albeit with a few toxic pills (higher taxes for banks, polluters, and the rich, oh noooooz!)
Try it and see how you do.
D.
Must watch
Channel surfed around this evening to find something to watch while we ate my pad thai . . . lit upon Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, great case of fascination of the abomination there. I watched just enough to assure myself that Roger Ebert’s review was spot on, and enough to remind myself how much I hated that book. Then channel surfed across the cable and got torn between two movies I really love: Groundhog Day and Clueless. Clueless won, but only because Alicia Silverstone is so adorable.
And once I start watching, I have to watch to the end. I’m that way about rom-coms more than anything else. I have to see Alicia hook up with Paul Rudd, or Bill Murray with Andie McDowell, or Gene Wilder with Teri Garr (what, you didn’t know Young Frankenstein was a romantic comedy?) I’m that way with Grosse Pointe Blank, too, and I don’t even care that much for Minnie Driver. But you gotta love John Cusack’s blood-soaked proposal at the end.
How about you — what movies do you love so much you’ll watch them over and over, no matter how many times you’ve seen them before?
Listening to Pandora right now . . . Uncanny how well it reads my likes.
D.
Visiting the dead
Yeah, another dream. Sorry. No one ever comments on these posts, which proves that dreams are only of interest to the dreamer.
I’m walking with my father (still very much alive) in my grandparents’ neighborhood, and we’re trying to decide whether to call first or just drop in. I remember their number: AT2-9395 (right, Sis?) but we decide to drop in anyway. And there they are, and I give them each a hug and kiss, even my malevolent grandmother.
They have a boarder . . . a plump Jewish guy in his early 20s. He starts arguing with me about the need for Jews to marry one another and give birth to lots of little Jews, and I’m offended and start explaining the concept of hybrid vigor to him.
Go figure.
D.
Something like one out of five of my Facebook friends are people I don’t know. I don’t know them, I don’t know how they found their way onto my friends list. I suppose I must have accepted their invitation and in a burst of e-licentiousness I friended them back. I don’t care what they’re doing and I don’t read their posts. They’re like background noise at a party.
Then there are my “friends” from my old high school, the one I attended in ninth grade. Some of these folks I really do care about. Some I frankly dislike. Some I like, but I hate their politics, and I have to restrain myself from picking fights with them or with their commenters. Sometimes I don’t restrain myself.
They’re teabaggers, some of them. On one level I feel squicked out, knowing I palled with people who would later become wingnuts. And on another level, I feel like I failed them. On the other hand, one of my best friends from junior high — a guy with whom I had frequent political arguments — is a self-described conservative. And if I couldn’t convince him of my politics, I guess I’m just not that good at convincing.
It’s not like anyone listens to me. I’ll update my status and one or two people will “like” and one or two, if I’m lucky, will comment. Admittedly, I don’t update that often, but it’s a vicious circle. One of my wingnuttier acquaintances from 9th grade makes some comment about the morons at the DMV, or fixing up a room of his house, and ten, twenty people comment. Mostly women. Is it because he is recently divorced and they are too? I would think the soul patch on his profile photo would put them off, but apparently some women are into soul patches.
Once, in med school, people listened to me. It was uncanny. We were gathering outside a lecture hall maybe ten minutes before class would start, and I was exclaiming about some damn bit of politics or another, and before I knew what was happening I had a knot of about ten people around me. Listening to me. I realized that I had no idea what I had just said, never mind any understanding of why it should attract so much attention, and in the shock of the moment I lost my train of thought. I shut the hell up and they dispersed and I was relieved. And it never happened again.
But back to Facebook. I admit that I friended some people just to look at their pix and see what they look like nowadays. Mind you, I haven’t aged all that well, since I’m short and tubby (no matter how many hours I log in the gym) and balding and short and going gray and still short. But some of these people — wow. What happened to you. While others are still every bit as cute as they were thirty-five years ago. Life’s unfair that way.
The best moment of my Facebook experience is when I figured out how to block game requests. I have one game on Facebook, Word Twist, and I don’t care about the other games. I don’t give a damn if Sue needs leaf mulch for her beets, or if Mike wants to give me two dozen rounds of ammo for my Glock, free of charge. This is just so much spam to me, only even less useful, since I’m told that some people actually eat spam. Once I figured out how to block that crap, my Facebook page became much prettier.
The most striking thing about Facebook is that no one ever wants to talk to me. Right this instant, seven of my friends are on Facebook. Yes, I realize most simply have their computer on, and they’re busy feeding their chickens or boffing their spouses or doing the laundry, and their computer is sitting forlorn and forgotten, but some of them are people who like me, or at least I believe they do, and they’re not saying hi. Which is only one small step away from the annoying observation: Neither am I. Which makes me wonder: can I block that function, too?
Oh, hey, one of my new friends is online right now! I’m outa here.
D.
You’d think I had made tiramisu
We had a pot luck today to say goodbye to one of our favorite admins. She’ll still be with us (corporate-wise) but she’s moving to another office about four or five miles away. Anyway, for once I decided not to sponge off everyone else and bring some food of my own. But I was exhausted yesterday and figured I’d make something fast, easy, and yummy.
Rice Krispie Squares. According to the instructions on the marshmallow package — nothing special, except I decided to throw in a bag of Heath Bar Crunch bits, which gave the end product just enough chocolate-and-toffee zing to be noticeable. One bag of bits was hardly enough to be noticeable among all that gooey krispie goodness. What I’m trying to say is, my squares had freckles, they weren’t exactly mochachino.
I made a big 10″ by 14″ casserole dish of them, too, and guess what? All but one square disappeared. Some people ate two or three squares, which amazes me, since I had one and found it rather barfy after the second or third bite. But people went nuts for my Rice Krispie Squares. It’s incredible. Is it a comfort food thing? Would I have been even more popular had I made potato pancakes? (Oh, wait — that’s my comfort food.)
And how do I top myself next time?
D.
Stuffed squash
I was intrigued enough by Dorie Greenspan’s “Pumpkin Stuffed With Everything Good” recipe to experiment with it this weekend. Fortunately for me and my family, there are no more pumpkins in the store, so I bought three acorn squash instead. Well, you know how big a pumpkin is, and how big an acorn squash is, right? So you would think that acorn squash would bake a lot faster than that whole, stuffed pumpkin. Yet it took a full two hours at 350 F for our dinner to be ready.
I’m not sure I’ll ever try the whole pumpkin version. Sounds dramatic, the kind of thing that would make a real impact at a dinner party. But not if dinner is at 7 and the pumpkin ain’t tender until 9 or 10. In any even, the acorn squash version rocked, so that’s what I’m reporting on this evening.
I doubt there are many rules regarding the stuffing itself. Use what you please. I could see a strictly vegetarian version working very well (especially if you’re the kind of vegan who eats cheese), but the bacon and ham I used made for a savory dish. Acorn squash does so well with sweeter flavors — my usual method (handed down from dear old ma) is to roast it with butter, cinnamon, and brown sugar decorating the cut surface — so using cooked rice and chopped fruits and nuts, perhaps sweetened and spiced appropriately, would make an interesting side dish.
My stuffing consisted of the following:
Pepperidge farm stuffing from the bag, about 3 cups
One small yellow onion, chopped fine and sauteed in olive oil
Four strips of bacon, fried up crispy, then chopped
About 1/4 cup of chopped ham
About 1/2 to 2/3 cup of mixed cheeses, chopped into chunks — I used mostly gruyere
Chopped fresh shiitake mushrooms
Three garlic cloves chopped fine
Sage (fried crispy in bacon fat, then crushed), chopped green onion, fresh thyme, salt and pepper
Preheat oven to 350 while preparing the stuffing. I cooked my bacon, drained off the bacon fat, and added olive oil to the pan. Then I sauteed my onions along with my green onion, then added the mushrooms, ham, garlic, herbs. I took the pan off the heat, let it cool a bit, then tossed the sauteed goodies with dry stuffing and the cheese. Now you’re good to go. Almost.
Cut your squash in half at their equators, then clean out the yuck in the middle. To the stuffing, add 1/3 cup of cream (I’m sure you could use stock or even water) and several grinds of nutmeg. Stuff your squash and carefully put the two halves back together. You’ll find that if you set the acorn squash stem-side-down, they’ll sit squarely. Now cook them on a foil-lined cookie sheet for about an hour, carefully separate the halves, and bake for another hour.
To separate the halves, I used a big bread knife and passed it between the two halves. This worked well.
As I mentioned, it took a full 2 hours at 350 F for the acorn flesh to get tender. These were quite rich — Karen and I each ate only half a squash. The bacon, cheese, and ham likely made this dish heavier than it would be otherwise. I’m sure the cream didn’t help, either!
D.