Si, and I like potatoes.

The perils of cheap caviar

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:46:09 GMT

So, I hit Ocean State Job Lot on my way home from work yesterday, and on a whim I bought a $3 jar of caviar and decided to have a caviar omelet for dinner (since 'song's out of town, cooking eggs wouldn't be a problem).

The thing I hadn't realized is that it was black capelin caviar.

Most of the traditional caviars are black, so I didn't really question that this one was, too. But capelin caviar is normally orange (like a tiny version of salmon roe).

Which means it was dyed.

So when the caviar hit the hot and somewhat moist eggs, the dyes ran. Leading to a green and blue omelet. Fortunately, it tasted just fine, but that's definitely a lesson learned. I also chose to not let Max lick the plate (in spite of his not-so-polite requests to do so), as I've got no idea how healthy those dyes would be for a kitty. I hate depriving the cat of seafood or eggs (although I don't hate it as much as he does), but better safe than sorry.

But yeah, cheap caviar = dyed. Which is silly, as orange caviar doesn't look any grosser than black caviar. Also, the omelet was delicious.

(Incidentally, it was a jar of this caviar; for $3 instead of the $8+/jar they're charging online, I'm just fine with it.)

For anyone wondering why it took so long for anyone to take the IRS claims seriously

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:28:02 GMT

It might have something to do with the Republicans crying wolf so many damned times.

Worth noting

Tue, 21 May 2013 01:08:50 GMT

Political memory is short, so for those who don't remember, here's the Senate vote on Hurricane Sandy relief.

Note the presence of Inhofe and Coburn in the "no" column.

When they inevitable request aid for OK, yes, they'll be a pair of hypocritical bastards.

No, it doesn't mean OK should be denied the aid; the request is legitimate, and the people need help, not a pointless lesson in what a pair of shits they've elected.

But the senators themselves damned well deserve to be raked over the fucking coals. And to get the fuck out of our government.

(FYI, for those who don't know, my roots are in OK; my mom grew up in OK, and although I no longer have any family near any of the affected areas, it's still a part of my childhood.)

You know

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:46:50 GMT

When the comment from the PE teacher on your daughter's mid-term report is, "social responsibility is inconsistent," that's a little like the high school equivalent of being on Nixon's enemies list, and the sort of thing that convinces me she's doing something right.

Needless to say, her comments from her real teachers are all raves.

Oh, and yes, I'm sure there are good K-12 gym teachers out there, just as there are good debt collectors, TSA employees, and televangelists out there. I haven't met any yet (don't get me started on the ones I dealt with growing up), and this one's the stereotype of the genre, right down to being a sub-literate bully.

Why Facebook is useful

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:38:32 GMT

Thanks to The Social Network*, I've learned that A) 'song's birthcousin (who I've known since he was thirteen, some twelve years back) is engaged (finally!**), and B) that an old friend of mine (someone I roadtripped with to Megacon a long time ago, before 'song and I were even seeing each other) is now a brand new dad.

*I mean, it was the first place online where you could share news with people, add "friends," and meet new people, right? So it surely deserves that title.

**They've been dating for at least seven years, and seeing as she's almost as much a part of his family as he is, I'm both happy and relieved.**

A poll

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:30:16 GMT

(ETA: 'song claims that she was only disputing the title track's quality; I still say she's wrong, though. I mean, Bret Michaels made the couplet, "Don't look back and have no regrets/Like beasts of prey we must feed on it" work!)

I meant to post this last night, but LJ spent hours being unusable (and DW still won't let you poll for free). Anyway, shadesong and I had a mild disagreement last night about this topic. As far as I'm concerned, there are only four possible answers to this question, and they're listed below, but if you've got some other wacky one (like "not a good album"), I suppose you could leave it in comments.

Poison's Flesh and Blood:

View Poll: #1913973

Thank you, autocorrect

Thu, 16 May 2013 14:14:48 GMT

Normally, I get grumpy when a spellchecker lacks a word. But when you're typing an email at a largely Jewish school, regarding something specifically dedicated to a Hebrew teaching program, it's a good thing when a squiggly red line appears when you type "pogram" instead of "program."

Target: Not just for underwear anymore

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:08:29 GMT

Target will be selling DC-comics summer lawn items and furniture. shadesong has already requested a Batman snack cup.

My million dollar movie idea

Tue, 14 May 2013 23:23:50 GMT

Star Trek: Into Harkness

In a tribute to Fantastic Voyage, the Enterprise is shrunk down to enter the bloodstream of Agatha Harkness, dying thanks to a curse placed on her by a mad Wanda Maximoff. They fight dangers ranging from microscopic Brood to microscopic Romulans to microscopic Kree. But things get intense during the climactic battle, when the Big Bad is revealed: Brian Michael Bendis (played by Michael Chiklis). The battle between Kirk and Bendis is epic and heartbreaking. The sequel, featuring Mark Millar (played by Alan Tudyk), will turn out to be underwhelming, derivative, and overlong, but will be the most successful in the series.

Lasagna

Mon, 13 May 2013 17:25:00 GMT

For years, Lasagna was about the only kind of pasta I didn't like. shadesong was baffled by this, since I love pasta, meat, cheese, and tomato sauce. There were two problems: First, I'm simply not a fan of the long, flat noodles, which seem to be the worst form of pasta in terms of the texture/flavor ration. Second, every lasagna I'd tried was a crappy one built around the noodle as the primary ingredient (see this image for a typical one). These monstrosities were over 50% noodle, and sometimes had five or six layers of noodles in them. They were nasty, and I thought that's what a lasagna was supposed to be.

Fuck no.

Once I discovered the truth, that the noodles in a good lasagna exist solely for the purpose of providing a minimal structure to transport oodles of cheese and meat (with some sauce attached), I realized how good a lasagna could be. It's also surprisingly easy to make, and like making a cake, has the advantage of usually providing some yummy prep-leftovers. I made it again last night for Mother's Day, and am still feeling kind of full the day after.

Here's my recipe, modified from a few I'd found in books and online. Note that I make it gluten-free, since 'song has celiac disease, but no one who's ever set foot in our house has ever complained about it; as I said, the pasta's the least important part, and if you're tasting the pasta in a lasagna, you're probably eating a crappy lasagna:

Ingredients:

1 package gluten-free lasagna noodles (or any lasagna noodles that don't need to be boiled/soaked first).
1 65-ounce jar of Prego Pasta Sauce With Meat. You're welcome to make your own sauce, of course, but I'm a fan of not doing work when I don't have to. You'll still be modifying this so that the ratio of meat to sauce reaches a more acceptable level, anyway.
1 container (usually 1.75 cups) low-fat ricotta cheese (regular-fat will work just fine of course, but the low fat stuff doesn't lose much flavor)
2 cups low fat, small curd cottage cheese (small curd is more important than low fat, if you're wondering).
1 1-lb ounce package (or two 8-oz packages) mixed, shredded Italian cheese. I'm partial to the six-cheese mix from Sargento. Do NOT use low-fat cheese here.
1.5-two pounds of ground beef (from my chili-making, I'm guessing you could sub ground turkey easily enough, and probably other meats, too; I'm less certain about a veggie lasagna.)
1 large yellow onion, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, minced
salt, pepper, anise

First mix the ricotta and cottage cheese together in a bowl.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Start by sautéing the onions until they're somewhere in the soft/brown range. I usually use olive oil here. Then throw in the garlic and sauté for another minute or so. Add the ground beef and sauté until it's all browned and mixed in with the onions and garlic. Turn off the heat (and if you're stuck with a fucking electric stove like I am, remove the pan from the burner), then pour in the sauce and stir. The residual heat will warm it up just fine. Season with salt, pepper, and anise/fennel to taste.

Now, take a 9X12 pan and ladle in enough sauce to cover the bottom of the pan. Then cover with a layer of noodles (you'll probably need three full ones, and one partial one to go horizontally across the top). Take the ricotta/cottage mix and spread thickly on all of the noodles (I try to make it thick enough to make the noodles invisible). Then ladle in sauce to cover the cheese (again, thick enough to cover it up). Then layer in noodles, and repeat. You might get a whopping three layers of noodles if your dish is deep. Do NOT, for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, overfill your dish.

Once you're done (the top layer should be a sauce layer), sprinkle the shredded cheese on. I go for a thick layer of cheese, and it usually ends up being about 10-13 ounces of the stuff. Then cover the dish in foil and place in the oven for an hour. If you've got any leftover sauce or cheese mix, eat these; it's the savory equivalent of eating cake batter.

After that, take it out, take the foil off, and let it sit for about fifteen minutes; at this point, it's bordering on soup, and you should give it time to set. In the meantime, take advantage of the melted cheese and possibly slightly crisp that's stuck to the foil. Melted cheese is yummy, and you shouldn't let any go to waste.

Finally, eat! We usually put ours in bowls, not on plates, as things will get messy otherwise. Makes a decent number of servings. Let's call it ten, unless I'm there, in which case it's more like six.

Two non-spoilery thoughts on last week's Voice

Mon, 13 May 2013 00:27:23 GMT

1. Seeing Rod Stewart was sad. Sad, sad, sad.

2. Bringing back Juliet Sims only served as a reminder of how much the voters fucked up in season 2 at the end.

The classiest joint on the interwebs

Sun, 12 May 2013 11:33:23 GMT

Skepchick notes that Reddit treats men better than women.

Reddit users respond by calling her the c-word and the t-word.

(The first link is safe and well-written; the second is vile.)

Taxachusetts, my ass

Sat, 11 May 2013 11:54:02 GMT

Up here, we recognize the right to cheap beer, dammit.

(Also, we've gotten a huge state refund every year we've been here, and I generally got squat when I lived in GA.)

I'm off the Museum of Fine Arts today, because Stan Sakai is speaking there. Yay! Alas, it's likely to focus on the crappy iOS game (which has some of the worst UI I've encountered, and really belongs on a system like the Vita), but it's Stan. Plus, you know, the MFA.

The difference between men and women

Fri, 10 May 2013 18:32:16 GMT

It's absolutely inappropriate to have a woman working for an organization who might have, prior to her hiring, starred in a raunchy online comedy series.

But it's totally appropriate to have a man who has beaten and abused two different spouses, spouted racist comments, and assaulted police officers working for the organization. As an "ambassador."

At least, that's what Chicago Blackhawks chair Rocky Wirtz thinks, and he's clearly a smart and capable man who understands nuance, right?

(Oh, and anyone want to tell me how many Native Americans play for the Blackhawks, while we're at it? Yeah, it's not quite as bad as the football team in DC that I refuse to name, but that's damning with faint praise.)

Dear Adult Swim

Fri, 10 May 2013 16:05:25 GMT

I think it's awesome that you're taking a lineup already filled with one-rape-joke-per-epiosde-whether-its-needed-or-not* Family Guy reruns and adding a show about and starring Mike Tyson. That's just all kinds of special, especially since I'd already given up on Robot Chicken (a genuinely inventive show until Seth Green decided to go down the same path more often than not a couple of years back). Maybe you could up the ante and add Urotsukidōji‎ to your anime lineup. That would make you oh-so-extra-special.

Of course, in all seriousness, I'll be back for Venture Brothers, but decisions like this do nothing to instill any confidence or inclination to bother with any of the 85 other new shows you've announced.

*Spoiler: it's never actually needed.**

**If you're about to comment with an exception, see the last spoiler***.

***And yes, that includes George Carlin's famous routine. Being brilliant is not the same as being perfect, folks.

Heh

Thu, 09 May 2013 12:51:21 GMT

McSweeney's is still capable of making me laugh every once in a while.

Specifically, with this list of Discarded lines from Robert Palmer's 1988 Hit, "Simply Irresistible."

I'm now going to sing these every time the song comes on my iPod.

I'm not typical

Wed, 08 May 2013 22:09:36 GMT

So shadesong went to Target today, and showed me the underwear she bought.

The more frilly and slightly skimpy panties were fine, but the Batgirl ones, complete with a picture of Babs swinging through the city? Now those are awesome.

Mini Linkdump

Wed, 08 May 2013 16:38:37 GMT

I'd never heard of comedian Sam Morril, and based on this piece and this one, it might have something to do with his having no actual talent or sense of humor. Trigger warning for rape "jokes."

In case anyone anywhere doesn't already know that Abercrombie and Fitch is an awful place that doesn't deserve any business unless you're an arsonist, here's more proof. Incidentally, I typed "my friends who like Abercrombie and Fitch" into my Facebook search and was happy to have no one turn up.

On the privilege afforded to Frank Rich's (largely untalented) son (and the Times's complete willingness to pretend no such privilege exists; if you believe that the Public Editor really served any real ombudsman purpose, I've got this bridge in Brooklyn you can have cheap!). The article also touches on the similar (but at least generally acknowledged) privilege Lena Dunham experiences.

Happier links:

There's a web series ("Blue") starring Julia Styles. I'm posting this pretty much so I remember to check it out. Between Netflix, Amazon, and shorter venues, keeping up with the first-run stuff online is getting really tough.

And Kill Screen's piece on Hannah Epstein's attempt to undermine corporate copyright intrigues me.

And there's a new Humble Bundle, with Doublefine games! I'm waiting for payday to snag it, but having all of these games finally on the Mac is a good thing.

A few Amazon Deals of note

Wed, 08 May 2013 13:26:35 GMT

The Kindle Daily Deal is on Jonathan Harwood's The Ghost Writer for $1.99. I reviewed this way back when for Bookslut, and it's a nifty read.

(Also -- wow, it's been over ten years since I wrote my first column for Bookslut! It wasn't my first non-blog writing experience -- I'd written for CHUD, Rambles, and The Green Man Review by that point -- but this was definitely higher-profile, and while it wasn't a perfect experience, I did meet some great folks through it, and can probably draw a line from there to my current writing for PW (which, in turn, has led to other paying gigs, including three essays in this set). Also, alas, it looks like stuff from my first two months there is no longer online, although the Wayback Machine does still have them, at least.)

And the Sci-Fi Deal of the Day is on A. Lee Martinez's Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain for $1.99! Martinez has somehow remained the invisible genre writer, a guy whose work I adore, published by big-name houses, but who never seems to get a tenth of the attention (either in zeitgeist or award talk) that he should.

Meanwhile, the Deal of the Day offers the Forever Marilyn or Singin' in the Rain box sets at huge discounts (78 and 58% off, respectively). That's supposedly for Mother's Day, even though I think I'd enjoy these sets more than shadesong.

They've also got When Harry Met Sally on Blu-Ray for $4.75 (76% off).

And finally, the Mass Effect Trilogy has dropped down to $39.99 (33% off), or just over $13 per game (and it includes some of the DLC for the first two games, as well).

Good advice

Tue, 07 May 2013 13:33:34 GMT

Dance like Uatu is watching.

(Today's literally wall-to-wall meetings. This post will be my drive-by appearance on LJ until about 9PM, even in the lurking/reading sense).

Because I'm still occasionally a twelve-year-old

Mon, 06 May 2013 22:29:45 GMT

Got a packet of coupons from my health insurance in the mail.

I'm sorry, but I still snicker whenever I see the brand name Oral-B.

A wacky notion

Mon, 06 May 2013 12:15:09 GMT

So I've got a wacky notion for a YA novel that'll sell: A dystopia!

Awesome, right? No need for any details, it's a fucking dystopia. Someone will die, someone else will fall in love, and if the setup of the dystopia makes no logical sense, who cares? It's only the weird socially restrictive order that matters!

Seriously! It's like money in the bank!

Actually, the last two ones I read for PW were genuinely interesting takes, one taking a different structural approach, and the other presenting a POV character and some twists that really adds to the genre as a whole. And I firmly believe that When We Wake is next year's Printz winner (of course, I thought Code Name Verity would win this year's award, so what do I know?). But I sometimes worry that every good exception is only going to lead to dozens more cynically-written and even more cynically-acquired (and edited) books that are fucking carbon copies of each other and add nothing new or interesting to the field. It's not that every subgenre doesn't get this; I tend to get dystopias, mysteries, and contemporary problem novels as my big YA categories for PW, so I see the problems there, but not the eight zillion Twilight/Vampire Diaries knockoffs, or the Pretty Little Liar-wannabes (and, come to think of it, one of the three books I starred for YA in the last year could well be considered a PLL-style book). And I remember when Elayna was ten seeing four million books with covers designed to evoke Lemony Snicket.

But damn, sometimes I wish it weren't so obvious that some publishers and editors (and yes, authors) simply want to rake in some bonus cash on the long tail from The Hunger Games. Props to the ones who go above and beyond, but they're the exception.

A theory (not bunnies)

Fri, 03 May 2013 22:19:50 GMT

The narrator of the song "One Week," by Barenaked Ladies, is actually Doctor Manhattan. It explains the random pop culture references, the strange observances, and the narrator's awareness of events that happen in the future as well as the past and present.

Fun fact

Fri, 03 May 2013 14:58:18 GMT

I was only able to marry shadesong after I defeated her ten evil Skeksis.

The Doctor's Name

Fri, 03 May 2013 12:11:16 GMT

I think it's past the point of spoilerdom to note that the season finale of Doctor Who is titled "The Doctor's Name" (although it should go without saying that there's no reason to believe that we'll actually learn that secret just because that's the name of the episode).

So with that in mind, a poll:

View Poll: #1911792