Comcast CAN suck my nonexistent nuts!
on the other hand the mailman just came up to the house waking Ghengis from a dead sleep. He was too tired to bark for real but he tried so hard he ended up making a long, piggy snorting noise.
don’t anger the booger machine
Okay, so I just typed up this angry and vehement post wherein I threatened to make Comcast suck my nonexistent nuts and I railed against people (old white suburbanites) who think today’s kids are so much worse than the cleaver and brady kids they remember so clearly from their youth. Also, I wanted to take on those people who hate dogs and bitch about halloween (of course the kids come to your door asking for candy and then leave, what the fuck did you expect? handwritten thank you cards?).
Then I remembered that I needed to stop being so angry about things like that. Anger only replicates itself it solves nothing so I need to calm the fuck down, plus I’m sick as fuck again and threatening to fashion a set of balls so that Comcast can suck them is pretty counterproductive.
So, instead, I’ll talk about books because books are sexy in a rectangular and heavy sort of way.
1) Lamb: The gospel according to Biff, Christ’s childhood pal
Very funny, well written, engaging. As the title suggests, it’s another gospel, this time told from the perspective of Jesus’ best friend. It covers the WHOLE life, including those missing 20 years. It’s funny and irreverent without being disrespectful. You know how the story is going to end and still it will bring a tear to your eye. All in all, a great big recommendation on that one.
2) The Years of Rice and Salt
Everything you read about this book will tell you that the book is an alternate history, a look at how things would be different if the plague wiped out 99% of the europeans. This is incorrect. This book is a character study, a series of vignettes with characters recurring through history. The loss of the Europeans and the rise of the Chinese and Muslims is secondary and unnecessary. The strength of the book lies in the struggle of the main characters who are reincarnated time and time again, throughout history. Their souls are linked together and their lives cross paths with each iteration. This would have worked with any premise, the plague theory was weak and ultimately uninteresting. The book was very good until the end where it just fell apart. Page after page of theory and belief, the tedium was overwhelming and I ended up only skimming the last chapter. Also, I felt his depictions of the Native Americans as being peace loving noble savages to be entirely too heavy handed. He makes up an elaborate system of government that makes the Native Americans peaceable and logical and it totally ignores the fact that humans really aren’t peaceable and logical.Humans will always fight and kill each other and no elaborate system of marriage government and labeling will stop that. I recommend the book as a good read, but really only if you have nothing else to read at the moment.
3) Whale Season
Started it last night, read 121 pages in the tub. Love it. It’s not high lit or anything like that. It’s smart, funny, observational and weird. I’m hoping to finish it today. The author truly captures those little moments in great detail.
Okay, i’m going to go eat some belgian honeyed goat cheese on crackers and cough until my muscles tear.
la loca
I’m going to answer 2 sets of emails here now…
1) no, i have not jumped off the bridge yet. If you are using internet explorer you might have trouble reading this website. We’re working on that. Of course if you are using some versions of internet explorer you can’t see this. So, to answer your questions, no, I’ve not taken the site down or had a breakdown or anything like that, I’m just having a css issue.
2) no, I will not be doing the “post every day” thing. It’s a good idea, don’t get me wrong, but after 33 years I think I have a good handle on how my mind works and I’m reasonably certain that my self-sabotaging tendencies would kick in and I would post every day until the 5th and then not post for the next 45 days or something like that just to be a big flaming failure at something. I find it best to keep expectations low and not worry about these things. Besides, I already post pretty regularly.
Beyond the negative responses to your emails, what else do I have?
Well, I took the 2nd half of the pumpkin pasta dough, rolled it out and then cut it into very long, 1 inch wide chow fun noodles. I put together a super easy stir fry with lots of sauce (garlic black bean sauce, ginger juice, sriracha, veggie broth all thickened with cornstarch) and boiled up the big flat noodles. Noodles drained and dumped into the stir fry.
Took me 45 minutes to roll and cut the noodles, 15 minutes to actually cook dinner. I wish noodle rolling was faster.
Halloween was quiet, just David and me and the dogs eating black bean tacos and watching The Missing (which sucked) and drinking Spanish red wine (which was good).
Now I must take the dogs for their walk as the law says they’re not allowed to walk themselves.
Internet Explorer…
As far as I can tell, the problem I mention before occurs only with IE7 on a pc. It seems earlier iterations of IE work fine and of course REAL BROWSERS on all platformshave no problems at all.
Sorry, but IE is such a crappy browser compared to, oh, I don’t know, a rock shoved through your screen, that I’m surprised they keep coming out with new versions.
Anyway, since I’m using Firefox on a mac both at home and work, I’m having a hard time seeing the issue. Any feedback would be appreciated.
too much?
To be filed under “too much effort”?
I’m in a pasta mood lately, specifically, in a roll my own sort of mood. Also, in a pumpkin, apple, kale, sage kind of mood.
I mixed one pound of flour with one can of pumpkin, let the stand mixer knead this for me and I let it rest. Well, obviously, the ratio was way off and it needed way more flour, the dough was too wet. The problem is that of you knead in any more flour you have to let it rest again. So I added the flour and let it rest.
It was still wet when I went to roll it, but not terribly so. At this stage, if the dough is not too wet, you can dust it liberally with flour before each rolling.
I made a sauce of kale, apples, garlic, sage and fennel seed and the whole meal would have been perfect had I not overcooked the pasta by just a minute. Dang.
David is telling me lately that I’ve been working too hard on dinners, but it’s the best I have to give so I keep doing it.
There’s still half the dough left and I am thinking gorgonzola, pear, hazelnut sauce…