What a month. What a country. What a blog.
Endless bleating that Hagel is the suxxors because he hates all Jews everywhere, or because he did and said some stupid shit in the 90s (I remember the 90s, and we all did and said and wore some pretty stupid shit in the 90s) or because he doesn’t have a big D bedazzled onto his vagina.
Endless threads derailed by people who think that the suicide of a gifted yet misguided young man is their opportunity to call him names and gloat hell-fire-and-damnation style about how he deserved to be punished, rather than an opportunity to ask whether punishment should be the sole purpose of our criminal legal system.
We (the blog and the country) seem descended upon by an army of gun nuts and open carry weirdos, wingnuts and no-nuts and just plain-ol’ nuts, godbotherers, trolls, self-appointed rape inspectors, racists and ranters and self-talkers, all bereft of empathy, compassion or good sense. Dickheads everywhere, and the screeching! Jesus.
Never mind. Presents!
First, to get you in the mood, some music:
Next, Wodehouse, always such balm to the soul. I’m linking to a story called Ruth In Exile – a lovely little snip of a thing which will more than repay fifteen minutes of your time. If you have never read beyond Jeeves, then there is a world of joy awaiting you in Wodehouse’s short stories. If you have never read Jeeves? Well, get the fuck away from me until you have. Weirdo.
Then, my obsession for the last weekend – last year’s competition papers from the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad. I do admit that lingusitics puzzles might not be everyone’s idea of fun, but they kept me thinking, or at least cheating and pretending I knew the answer all along, for a good number of hours.
Food – I am going to point you to this caraway seed cake recipe from Hugh Fffernly Whiffingstable in the Guardian. It’s ludicrously easy to make. I tend to leave out the mace, substitute candied peach or apricot for the candied orange peel, and then ice the whole thing with an icing made by stirring together 2 cups of icing sugar, some grated orange rind and a big spoonful of sour cream. It’s a lovely cake – soft but with some weight, a crunchy top and that glorious anise and citrus tang of the caraway.
If you haven’t read it already, the Kitten Setting in which Mr Scalzi tells us of his inspired manner of dealing with trolls. One can dream.
Finally, the English Gents, for your delectation.
BGinCHI
You forgot to add:
“This post brought to you by Ritalin.”
Maude
Thx Sarah. I thought the blog was having spit up phases. Good to know it was so.
NotMax
Promise I’ll get around to opening your gifts right after I finish the humongous pile of them from the President.
Yutsano
Announced down below:
I PASSED!! I am now officially an instructor for the IRS.
SiubhanDuinne
@Sarah, Proud and Tall:
Well, okay, yeah. But it’s not like it was the fucking 70s, now, was it!?
Cassidy
@Yutsano: very cool
NotMax
@Yutsano
Congratulations. Sounded as if it was a taxing exam.
Mnemosyne
I forced “Honeysuckle Cottage” on G yesterday, but sadly it is still in copyright despite having been published in 1925 because that sonuvabitch Wodehouse lived until 1975, so almost everything he wrote is still in copyright.
PsiFighter37
I drank 2 beers and am totally wasted…this is what happens when your New Year’s Resolution (drink much less, exercise a lot more) comes to fruition. To be fair, though, one of the bears I had was Dogfishhead Palo Santo Marron, which is 12% ABV and tastes absolutely incredible – as woody as the name would suggest – but will light your ass up. So today is the 3rd day of the month (outside of New Year’s Day and one other Sunday) that I will have exercised zero. Just chugging my skim milk with soy protein powder and getting my read on.
Hope everyone else’s night is going swimmingly.
PF37 +2
ETA: @NotMax: You have to come up with better quips than that on a Friday night.
Baud
@NotMax:
That’s it! You’re getting audited.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yutsano:
Yay Yutz!! That’s great!! Well done!!
Oh wait, jack-booted thugs and eebil gummint employees sucking at the public teat, right?
Well, heck with that. Very happy for you.
Emma
@Yutsano: Congratulations!
SiubhanDuinne
O/T but there’s a banner ad up above that’s scaring the bejibbers out of me. It is for “MEET CHRISTIAN SINGLES” and I’ve gotta tell you, the guy they have illustrating the ad is one of the creepiest looking dudes I’ve ever seen.
AAAAARRGH! Make it stop!!
Violet
@Yutsano: Congratulations!
ruemara
My meds say that I cannot drink while on them because it might lower blood pressure. Since my meds are pathetic in the face my super veins, I hope my abuse of my friend’s liquor cabinet is helpful. To, you, Sarah. +3
NotMax
A question for foodies.
Have a recipe I dearly love, and which I make once in a blue moon for myself, for Sweet and Sour Tongue.
Was thinking of making it the next time my turn comes up to cook for the weekly gathering of friends, but know in my heart of hearts they will turn up their noses at eating tongue.
Any suggestions for a less outre cut of meat to substitute for the beef tongue? I’m thinking maybe pork butt, but would prefer to do something beefy.
different-church-lady
Are those really the only two options?
BGinCHI
@Yutsano: Congrats brother.
You’re not only The Man now. You’re The Man’s Man.
Raven
@NotMax: Brisket.
different-church-lady
@SiubhanDuinne:
Yes, Rick Santorum has that effect on people.
different-church-lady
@Yutsano:
Why bother? You can’t teach those guys anything.
PsiFighter37
@different-church-lady: I think you’re mixing him up with Tim Tebow.
slag
Psmith rules my world.
Violet
@NotMax: Suggestion for substitution found online:
Debbie(Aussie)
@Yutsano:
Way to go, congrats! Sounds like you worked hard for it. Hope it will be interesting and involves a good pay-rise :)
RobertDSC-iPhone 4
@Yutsano:
Congrats!
I’m in downtown Long Beach, eating Subway & getting ready for the train ride home. I visit a one dollar bookstore down here & stock up on titles to read.
ranchandsyrup
Congrats yutsano! Celebrate your success.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@SiubhanDuinne: The Seventies… the Decade That Taste Forgot.
Among other things, the 70s was the decade that Fender and Gibson forgot how to make good guitars and amps. The car companies turned out utter crap. It’s amazing how many consumer products went to hell. “We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969”. Oh yeah, music went through a drought too.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@NotMax: A pig’s ass instead of a cow’s tongue? Can I just send out for Chinese?
Redshift
I am getting interviews, and have a second interview next week for one of the jobs I’m most excited about! Crossing my fingers that I may be employed again in a couple of weeks.
That is all.
freelancer
@Yutsano:
Congrats!
Scuffletuffle
@Yutsano: Congratulations!
Debbie(Aussie)
@Redshift:
Good luck, fingers crossed.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Yutsano:
WE’RE DOOMED I TELLS YA, DOOOOOOOOMED!
Congratulations, you’ve earned it you little piglet who is suckling at the government teat.
Move over, I want some! ;p
Seriously, great job! :)
@Redshift:
Good luck! :)
Odie Hugh Manatee
@SiubhanDuinne:
Awww shit, ninja’d!
Yutsano
@NotMax: Use the tongue and call it lengua. Just say it’s from Spain.
JGabriel
@BGinCHI:
Well, if Ritalin helps you find cool stuff on the web, then I want some.
.
A moocher
@SiubhanDuinne: nothing was fucking stupider or more fun than the 70s, man.
JGabriel
Yutsano:
Congratulations, Yutsie! Where & when is the celebration party?
.
A moocher
@SiubhanDuinne: ditto…what horrible surfage-error did I make that gazoogle imagines I am on the prowl for creepy christianist loosers. I do just fine with the losage all by myself; more help I does not want.
A moocher
I have discovered a delicious new beverage: Banyuls. You have never tasted it, so don’t pretend.
Yutsano
@JGabriel: Well right now I’m so fucking exhausted from this thing I’m just sitting at home doing nothing. And the worst part is I have to work tomorrow. Sigh. I’ll catch up on sleep at some point eventually.
Redshift
@Yutsano: Congrats!
burnspbesq
@Yutsano:
Hot diggity, dude.
Higher grade? Step increase?
trollhattan
Since is sorta open thread, my second favorite photo blogger meets the Big Dog.
http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-really-good-day-at-work.html
Also, too, anybody ever had their shower door spontaneously ‘splode into a bazillion bits? I did, today (nobody around, so nobody hurt). Fecking scary.
Jewish Steel
@Yutsano: Well done!
danielx
@SiubhanDuinne:
Actually I’m trying to think of a decade in which I haven’t said and done some stupid shit, and coming up with…nothing. Though the 70s were big fun in some ways…
Scamp Dog
@SiubhanDuinne: I’ve gotten those too. Anybody who’d sign up for a Christian singles site is probably not a good match for this atheist. I think it may have gotten on my list for looking at the Slacktivist site. He’s got some great articles on how evangelical opposition to abortion only came to be in the ’70s, more or less as a deliberate political strategy. Yet another example of the horrors of that decade.
mclaren
There’s a cancer in the American soul. Over the past 30 years, an increasing segment of the U.S. population has turned into vengeful sadistic haters whose only enjoyment in life seems to involve delectating in the deliberate brutalization of the weak and the inoffensive.
Whether it’s the pointless counterproductive prosecution of non-criminals for trivial non-crimes, or gloating over the mass murder of innocent children by assault weapons that aren’t available for public purchase in any other civilized society, too many Americans seem to have become vicious sadists who love agony and take grotesque delight in needless suffering and pointless destruction. Even our movies have now degenerated into mindless celebrations of suffering and death, like The Avengers and Iron Man 3 and Saw IV and Hostel II.
We even see this on Balloon Juice. One of the front-pagers here announced that he hoped anyone who disagreed with him politically would “die in a fire” (soonergrunt). This is the kind of gloating adoration of pain and hatred that acts like syphilis on a society. Embracing this kind of hate and barbarism will destroy a society faster than the Black Plague.
SiubhanDuinne
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
Heh. I use that line allthetime. It is perfect and beautiful in its exquisite truthiness.
burnspbesq
I don’t recall seeing anyone take that position, and I’m certain I didn’t, because I don’t believe it.
However, if you want deterrence, you do have to punish the people you catch, so those two objectives are mutually reinforcing.
redshirt
The 1970’s ruled. In almost all regards. Excepting Vietnam, really, everything else was groovy. The best music.
Led Zeppelin is the best rock band ever.
Yutsano
@burnspbesq: No change in pay status. However I just became a rather tasty commodity for any other business unit that might be looking for an ACS duck to poach.
@mclaren: I have only one thing to say to this:
Derp.
scav
@Yutsano: Huzzah! Obscure, Dreaded and Scary Powers are yours!
PurpleGirl
@Yutsano: Congratulations. Good job.
Anne Laurie
@mclaren: We love you too, sweetie.
scav
@A moocher: neener neener. been to port vendres and couliers so yes, but nice though. stunning viewmthose grapes have.
Comrade Mary
@Yutsano: Yay! yay! yay!
Look what I gotcha! (Yeah, it’s from October, but I just found it today. Also, this.
(Oh, man, I hope those links work. One’s Canadian and from WP, so all hell may break loose.)
BobS
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: Fender had quality issues after the company was sold to CBS in 1965, and the 70’s especially were hit or miss. I own a couple Stratocasters and I’m quite happy with both- a 1962 slab-board I inherited from an older cousin in the early 70’s, and a 1979 Antigua hardtail I traded a shotgun for in the mid 80’s.
As far as 70’s music, if you think the decade was a drought, you just weren’t listening- NRBQ, Patti Smith, Graham Parker, Warren Zevon, Richard Thompson, Brian Eno…
danielx
In other news we got our spiffy new range today, and I’m not sure I like the glass top thing – any of y’all with experience with these?
Finally – I am certain that you will all be as totally crushed as I am that Snowbilly Snookie and Faux Nooz have split the blanket. Evidently she is planning on spending more time at the Wasilla compound to sharpen her skills at combining word salad, meth manufacturing and use of high powered weaponry. Note to self: do not visit Alaska for vacation for the next thirty years.
burnspbesq
@mclaren:
Not clear who that refers to, but neither Aaron Swartz nor Bradley Manning fits that description.
And the polite word for you calling anyone out for the use of hyperbole is “double standard.” The less polite word is “hypocrisy.”
Suffern ACE
@mclaren: you’ll need to get to the root cause to cure the disease. I’m thinking though that you need to go back 50 years.
PurpleGirl
@NotMax: I don’t have any suggestions for you, but I haven’t had tongue in decades. My mother used to make it because my father liked it. I stopped mentioning eating it because people made ewww faces at me.
PPOG Penguin
@slag: Comrade Psmith surely is the People’s Pet.
And thanks, Sarah, for finding a Wodehouse story I never knew existed. Blandings, Jeeves, Mr Mulliner, Psmith, Ukridge, Uncle Fred and so many others have been part of my world for as long as I can remember, but he also produced so many one-offs it’s almost impossible to keep track.
danielx
@mclaren:
I hear what you’re saying, but dude…did somebody piss in your Wheaties this morning or what?
Yutsano
@Comrade Mary: Oh. My. Excuse me a moment. I need to be alone. :)
Comrade Mary
Oh, man, no welcome back gift for Sarah from me? I SUCK!
Here, day 19 from Mr. Kluwe for you.
His whole album, if you are curious.
Steeplejack
@danielx:
I had one in my last apartment and loved it. Came up to temp quickly, it was easy to clean, and the whole surface doubled as counter space when I wasn’t using it.
The only downside is that you can’t really do that pro chef “jiggling the skillet” thing.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@BobS:
Weellll ..could be an exaggeration, it wasn’t the late 60s, but the Allman Brothers, and then Springsteen kicked it back into life. Among others.
Comrade Mary
BUT THIS ONE’S MINE, BITCHES!
/faints at tattoo
Comrade Mary
Someone tell John that Tunch is two-timing him.
(OK, OK, I’ll stop spamming …)
PurpleGirl
@Comrade Mary: I like the double helix on his right arm. Neato.
SatanicPanic
@Yutsano: Rad! Do you get a gun and get to go collect Obamacare fines?
Oh, and 70’s rock and roll was the best (the punk and glam parts anyway), but rap didn’t get really good until the year 2000
danielx
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
A host of others – one of my fondest memories is seeing J. Geils Band opening for Rod Stewart and blowing the blow dried one off the stage. And damn near inciting the crowd to riot in the bargain…no more chairs on the floor during rock and roll concerts at IU Assembly Hall for a few years after that.
Petorado
That Captain Frodo gives new meaning to the term “sick and twisted.”
Yutsano
@SatanicPanic: The IRS still can’t collect the mandate fines (pouts). But hey, that nice little tax refund? Yeah, thanks for that dude.
mclaren
@SiubhanDuinne:
Mostly. But the movies! The movies in the 70s were awesome.
danielx
@Petorado:
No worse than seeing Fee Waybill of the Tubes in his Quay Lewd persona…you don’t want to know.
SatanicPanic
@Yutsano: Well that’s good. I heard from a reliable internet source that there was going to be a literal army of 655,000 IRS agents armed with hollow point bullets. Maybe that’s in 2014.
Suzanne
@Yutsano: and @Redshift: Way to go, y’all. :) Nice work! WOOTAGE!!!
Gin & Tonic
@danielx:
Make sure you clean up any spills *immediately*. There are special soft-scrub-type cleaners, but I found after a while you couldn’t get it really clean no matter what. Eventually we got tired of the heat-up and cool-down times of electric and put in a high-end gas range, which I absolutely love.
Suzanne
@mclaren:
I don’t know about that. The Black Plague was pretty fast.
Omnes Omnibus
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: This is from the 70s. It is exquisite.
Suzanne
@danielx: You gotta scrape it clean with a razor blade. I like not having to clean electric coils. We don’t have gas service in my neighborhood, so, sadly, a has range is not an option.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: You seem to wallow in hatred. How are you helping?
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne: I put in a propane tank and ran a line into the house just to have a gas range.
SatanicPanic
@Omnes Omnibus: Great songs this is one of my faves from the 70’s
max
@NotMax: Have a recipe I dearly love, and which I make once in a blue moon for myself, for Sweet and Sour Tongue.
The ‘Sweet & Sour’ appellation sort of implies Chinese, which sort of implies all chopped up.
Any suggestions for a less outre cut of meat to substitute for the beef tongue? I’m thinking maybe pork butt, but would prefer to do something beefy.
Beef heart would work, but it’s less tender. Beef brain would also work, but uh… It really depends on whether you’re cutting it up or stewing the whole thing.
Cut up – brisket, chuck or round would do. In one piece, I’d flank steak if you can find it in one chunk. (Everyone uses it for fajitas so it is a bit hard to find.)
Damn, I haven’t had (Hungarian) Heart & Kidney stew in awhile and also, I’d really like a fried chicken liver right now. Must need iron.
OP: their opportunity to call him names and gloat hell-fire-and-damnation style about how he deserved to be punished, rather than an opportunity to ask whether punishment should be the sole purpose of our criminal legal system.
Missed that. On the substance if not the hyperbole, I am with Mclaren. We have a weird system in which a lot of people delight in the idea of prisoners as ‘others’ who can be run through some sort of Death Race thing, and not only is that morally OK (because apparently sadism is GOOD), but also because it’s fun for them to diddle themselves about somebody getting it good & hard (because true sadism is FUN!). When it happens to them, of course, Hitler, because they are not criminals. (‘Criminals’ are black or at least dusky, donchaknow.)
I always figured that if you didn’t like someone that much, you ought to kill them, and if you won’t kill them, you shouldn’t fucking torture them either because that’s just chickenshit.
This is apparently an opinion shared by a rather small minority. So be it.
max
[‘No country for honorable men.’]
normal liberal
@danielx: I endorse Suzanne and G&T’s advice about cleaning your glass cooktop early and often. Once things get cooked on even a bit, getting them off is a major undertaking. Keep a spray bottle of white vinegar near the stove to keep gunk from forming while the surface cools and canbe cleaned.
I have to say I’ve come to hate my glass cooktop. Initially I was flummoxed by the lack of visual feedback; with an older electric coil I could estimate temperature by the color of the coil. I’d go back to gas in a heartbeat, but running the gas line would be way too expensive.
BobS
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: It never needed a kickstart- musicians active in the 60’s didn’t suddenly stop making music at the end of that decade- the Stones, Dylan, Zappa, the Band, Van Morrison, the (Small) Faces/ Humble Pie/ Rod Stewart, Neil Young, Dr.John, the Kinks… and that’s just limiting the conversation to rock’n’roll- you’ve got Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, & Ornette Coleman, or BB King, Muddy Waters, & John Lee Hooker, or Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, & Willie Nelson…I saw all of them perform during the 70’s drought.
And by the way, the Allman Brothers released their first record in 1969.
Jewish Steel
@mclaren:
Not released until May. mclaren a Hollywod elite? Irresponsible to speculate?
A moocher
@scav: Rats. I have been out-cosmo’d….the sordid truth is I was wandering through the local venders, and saw this one lone half-litre bottle and thought: “17% and $21? I likes me the sound of that”…..
but now I am glad I did. A taste to be explored further, for sure. I think a moped-tour from Banyuls to Douro may be in plans for a few years down the road.
normal liberal
@Gin & Tonic: Yikes. Much as I love a gas stove, that would scare me silly, and I say this a one who once sat in the front passenger seat of a car with a 5-gallon gas can between my feet with a tube running out the vent under the hood of the car. We weren’t going far, but still…
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: Public executions used to be a cheerful event to which people brought the family for a picnic. Most crimes brought the death penalty. We have moved forward. Not much, but some. It is progress.
The prophet Nostradumbass
It must be a difficult existence, being the only incorruptible person in the US.
Gin & Tonic
@normal liberal: Why would it scare you? This is a perfectly normal way to do things in areas which don’t have natural gas service. Propane company put in the tank, licensed plumber ran the line, town mechanical inspector inspected everything. Completely standards-based and code-compliant. Most stoves/ranges come in either natural-gas or LPG modes.
Omnes Omnibus
@The prophet Nostradumbass: I am not incorruptible. You just can’t afford me.
scav
@A moocher: not out-cosmoed, temporarily outlucked but you’ll catch up. Not a bad way to run into things either, happenstance and curiosity. There are a lot of different wines in that corner of France alongside the great seas of solid plonk and I’ve favorites among the plonk — and stellar landscapes to go with. Free up enough time to go with your curiosity, and don’t miss Minerve which is a bit farther to the north.
eta: Limoux, Foix, all those castles in les corbieres, the montaignes noires, fitou, oh you will have fun.
normal liberal
@Gin & Tonic: You’re absolutely right – I was thinking of the propane tanks that get hooked up to gas grills. (A sibling married into a household with a grill thus equipped, and promptly acquired a real grill that used actual charcoal, just as God intended.)
I’ll have to start checking my suburban privilege.
Suzanne
@Gin & Tonic: That’s pretty sweet. I don’t enjoy cooking enough to spend the kind of money it would take, but if I was building from new, I’d put in gas. I’d like a gas fireplace, too. Alas and alack. Other things to spend my money on. (My plan to get adopted by a Romney has not worked out thus far.)
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Fireplaces burn wood.
NotMax
Thanks for all the suggestions.
@max
Nope, not chopped up, and not a Chinese dish. More or less braising the tongue for a long time in a tomato-based cabbage and raisin sauce (the sour comes from using sour salt in the sauce), then slicing it and ladling the sauce and veggies over the slices.
Joey Maloney
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: In case no one’s pointed it out already, “pork butt” is actually a shoulder roast. If you’d like actual pork anuses, apparently you should order calimari.
gelfling545
@redshirt: But anyone who was over 15 in the 70’s and didn’t do at least one stupid thing had no life at all.
Beth
Thanks so much for the exquisite Wodehouse story. I had no idea, and am off to search for more!
Bill
@Yutsano:
So you’ll be teaching Independent Rear Suspension?
Sweet.
Bill
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
It’s like the MBAs didn’t know anything about the products that built the companies they were busy ruining.
brantl
@mclaren: You’re still a dick. telling you to eat a salted bag of dicks would be suborning cannibalism.
Shana
The kittening post was brilliant. Thanks so much for that.
Also, in re Wodehouse: there are both and English and American Wodehouse Societies out there. The American one has a convention every two years, and this year it’s in Chicago in October. Dues are only about $20 a year and get you a quarterly newsletter as well as discounts for the conventions.
They’re a blast if you’re into Wodehouse. Saturday is amusing and instructive talks followed by an evening banquet at which you’re encouraged to come costumed as a Wodehouse character if you’re so inclined, but I’ve never done that. Unfortunately we no longer throw bread rolls at the banquet after one poor woman got a glass of red wine knocked over onto her gown one year. Sunday brunch always has a skit. As you might imagine 200 or so Wodehouse fans are a fun bunch to hang out with for a weekend. Check it out if you’re so inclined.