Thursday, March 2, 2023

News and Updates

1. I’m still working my way through Bull Cook. I’ve made it through the sections on Fish and Eggs, and am now in the Soups and Sauces section. The quality commentary that I signed up for has not diminished. There will be further installments here, oh yes there will.

2. This week has been entirely devoted to Committee work down at Home Campus, with a short interval devoted to the care and feeding of undergraduates. On the whole I think I prefer the latter, but it has to be said that the former has had some rewards.

3. We’re currently in the “melt” phase of our winter, which has oscillated between snow/ice storms and spring-like temperatures. Yesterday it was so mild when I left work that I forgot my jacket in my office. This is not how March 1 in Wisconsin is supposed to work, folks. Meanwhile Los Angeles had a blizzard, there are tornadoes and hurricane-force winds in Texas, last year was again one of the hottest on record (something that gets said pretty much every year these days) and Yellowstone National Park is closed because there has been too much snow even for them. I suppose I should be glad that nothing is on fire like it was a couple of years ago. Good thing the climate isn’t changing, because otherwise I’d be worried.

What?

4. I am one of those people who is still playing Wordle, because it is fun and makes the day that much better. My completion rate is now an almost perfect bell curve – usually 4 tries, then sloping off to 3 or 5, and occasionally 2 or 6. Statistics FTW!

5. The State of Florida has descended into overt Fascism and nobody seems to care. Il Doofus the Governor has openly declared he will use state power to force corporations such as Disney to say only what he approves of them saying. There is legislation in process to force historians to teach right-wing propaganda instead of actual history and which arbitrarily bans a whole category of study that right-wingers have declared to be offensive to their delicate snowflake sensibilities. And their persecution of a powerless outgroup is following the precedents set in 1930s Germany so closely that they might as well have taken notes. Welcome to the party of “freedom” and “small government,” right?

If Republicans want me to stop calling them Nazis they need to stop doing the things the Nazis did.

6. Meanwhile a friend of mine alerted me to the fact that there is a bill in the Texas legislature that would ban Shakespeare’s comedies. Oh they think it’s about banning drag shows but the way it’s worded it would also cover a great many other things including some of the finest plays in the English language. I’m not entirely sure why drag shows have suddenly become the popular thing for Fascists to complain about but there it is. Honestly, the most dangerous thing about a drag show is that a conservative white man with a gun might show up.

7. On a lighter note, I was watching a soccer game a couple of weeks ago and saw something I’d never seen before. One team had kicked the ball out of bounds so an injured player could be attended to, and when play resumed the other team put the ball into play and was about to kick the ball back to the first team – a sporting gesture that isn’t in the rule book but which is universally honored across the game, from what I can tell. Except that one asshole on the first team charged in, stole the ball, and scored. This caused friction between the teams, shall we say. His own coach chewed him out in front of the entire stadium. When play resumed after that, the first team simply stood by and watched the other team score to cancel out the offending goal and then the game resume for real. It was the right thing to do.

8. Oliver and I have been watching the Flyers a fair amount of late despite the fact that they are in free-fall toward the bottom of the NHL. They’re a desperately out-manned team working hard to keep up with more talented squads and they’re actually kind of fun to watch that way – they don’t lie down. At this point in my life all I ask of sports is to be entertained.

9. Here is an excerpt from English As She Is Spoke, chosen at random from the back where the short paragraphs for further study are listed, for Lucy:

A man one’s was presented at a magistrate which had a considerable library. “What you make?” beg him the magistrate. “I do some books,” he was answered. “But any of your books i did not seen its. – I believe it so, was answered the author; i make nothing for Paris. From a of my works is imprinted, i send the edition for America; i don’t compose what to colonies.

This is the quality content you come here for, admit it.

10. I spent one evening this week at a recruiting event for our campus at one of the local high schools, answering advising questions that my colleague was kind enough to translate for me and thinking, “yeah, I really do need to learn Spanish.” Someday. Not today – I’m barely keeping up with things as it is. But someday.

11. The new grocery store in town sells guanciale! There will be carbonara!

12. On that note, do you know how old I am? I’m “let’s check out the new grocery store!” years old.

10 comments:

LucyInDisguise said...

1. Gonna hold you to that. Yes, sire, I will.

2. The California Trail Interpretive Center and Museum at exit 292 on I-80 near here has a building that has all of the hallmarks of being designed by a committee. And a committee devoid of leadership, at that. I have absolutely no idea what that has to do with what you wrote, other than conveying my personal opinion regarding the relative value of committees in general.

3. In a normal winter*, I usually have to treat the fuel in my truck with anti-gel 3 or 4 times. So far this year I’ve dumped nearly 9 gallons of that hsit** into my fuel tank, 28 ounces at a time. We’ve been at or below zero more times in the past 60 days than in all of the last five years combined. Three more days in the single-digits forecast for next week. Feels more like Baja Canada than High Desert Nevada. Good thing the climate isn’t changing, because otherwise, you’d have good reason to be worried.

5. What gets me going is all the assholes complaining about being called Nazis while they’re waving a damn red sheet with a Nazi swastica on it. [sidebar] Should we still be capitalizing the word Nazi? Feels wrong somehow. [/sidebar]

7. You’ll never see that level of sportsmanship in the NFL. Well, ‘never’ is an awfully big word - let’s alter that a bit to: ‘It’s unlikely that you’ll ever see …’

9. This is the quality content I come here for.

11. Cheeky!

Lucy

* For varying values of whatever normal could be defined as.

** You may need to rearrange those letters a bit …

David said...

1. Look for it soon - it will be my next post, whenever I get to it.

2. Surprisingly enough this committee actually accomplished its mission relatively effectively. I bow to nobody in my general disdain and avoidance of committees, meetings, and the corporatization of the university as an ideological movement, but credit where due I suppose.

You do know the old joke about "what is a camel?" right?

3. Wow - sounds like quite a winter. Ours has been the opposite - occasional flashes of actual winter with long stretches of muddy late March. I don't usually see my lawn between mid-December and the Ides of March - not that we get huge blizzards, more that it doesn't usually go away once it accumulates - but this year has been more brown than white.

5. They don't hide it anymore, do they? American patriots dealt with that threat once before. We'll do it again.

Also, yes, it should be capitalized because it is a proper noun rather than a generic term. It's short for Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) - "National Socialist German Workers Party," a name carefully chosen to mean nothing at all as it includes both right-wing terms ("national" and "German," appealing to the blood-and-soil nationalism of late-19th-century Europe) and left-wing terms ("Socialist" and "workers") in equal measure. They were very much a right-wing group, however, and were fanatically opposed to actual Socialists and Communists, whom they regarded with the same distaste that they viewed Jews and Slavs. You will occasionally hear stupid and uninformed people shouting that the Nazis were somehow a leftist group since "It says 'Socialist' right in the name!" but such people are a waste of time and can be dismissed out of hand. You know that "eggplants" just fry their circuits.

7. Probably not. I'm not even sure where they'd shoehorn it in even if they wanted to.

11. HA!

LucyInDisguise said...

1. Bated breath and all that.

2. Before I get to it, let me first make it clear that I’m not dissing the California Trail Interpretive Center or anything that is contained there in or on-site. The place is actually fantastic - my wife and I have spent many hours over an uncounted number of visits there. Exhibits are very well done and continuously updated, with annual events that are fun and educational. My issue is the building. “Sucks” would be a compliment. It took me 20 minutes to find an image of the front of this building (because almost no one who sees it is impressed). This is supposed to resemble a Conestoga Wagon?

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g45937-d2227548-Reviews-California_Trail_Historic_Interpretive_Center-Elko_Nevada.html

There is an actual Conestoga wagon in that picture! Now I will grant that the Conestoga is not a thing of beauty in and of itself, and beauty is in the eye, and subjective, and all of that - but that building is, to my eye, just plain ugly. While you’re on that website, check out the rest of the pictures and you’ll see why we keep returning (and making donations) to the place.

Yes, I do believe I’ve been around long enough to know that one. But out of the hundreds of camel jokes out there my favorite is this one:

Can you explain the difference between a noun and a verb?
“Hump” is a noun meaning “something on the back of a camel”… unless that thing is another camel, in which case, it’s a verb.


😉

3. We have varying amounts of snow on our property this year. The 100 square feet of ground where I park the power unit of my truck up on the hill is very nearly bare ground. The trailer attached to the power unit is sitting in about a foot of snow. Some of the drifts between there and the house are deep. However, I'm not complaining about the snow (because we need the water!), I'm just unusually and surprisingly weary of being cold this year.

5. Okay, I will concede the point on capitalization. Grudgingly.

And most of those jerks are eggplants. (My sincere and heartfelt apologies to any actual eggplants who happen to be reading this, but I’m sure they’ll understand. Eggplants have several orders of magnitude more brain power than the average rethuglican.)

11. To be honest, I didn’t even realize that pigs had cheeks until I looked up that word.

Lucy

David said...

2. Wow. That building is ugly with a capital F.

I have to say that I stared at it for several minutes and did not get "Conestoga wagon" out of the design, either. When I worked backstage we had a phrase we used whenever the designers got ahead of themselves and produced things that were impractical, overly complex, completely mystifying, and/or just brutally ugly: "too much concept." Because "concept," like heroin, is addictive and deadly.

I hadn't heard the hump joke - I will definitely have to find someone to tell that to. :) You know who would have loved that joke? My dad.

11. I never really thought about it except in the very general sense ("surely they must, mustn't they?") but making carbonara with guanciale rather than pancetta (or worse, regular bacon) was an eye-opening experience. Of the three recipes I took home from Rome, that's the one that I have found most reliable (cacio e pepe is really simple but really tricky, and amatriciana only appeals to some). I foresee much carbonara in my future.

LucyInDisguise said...

2, I may have disputes with people over beauty, but ugly? I know ugly when I see it.

Regarding your search: start with the wife & kids. It’s like multitasking: They will find a hundred or more people to tell that joke to in the next couple of hours. And yeah, it is kinda similar to a ‘dad’ joke, isn’t it?

10. I need to break form and put this in here. The reason will become apparent in the next paragraph:
… “yeah, I really do need to learn [Italian].” Someday. Not today – I’m barely keeping up with things as it is. But someday.

11, I made it all the way to the first right mark of parenthesis. Everything after that might just as well have been written by Carolino. 😳

That may be a new record, though, for the number of words in one paragraph that you made me [select:right click:lookup].

But, please, don’t change what you are doing or the way in which you are doing it. I now know a word for Italian bacon; that cacao e pepe means “cheese & pepper and is a dish of Rome that worked well for shepherds; and there is a type of pasta sauce out there that only appeals to some (which probably does not include me); not to mention that I now know that pigs have cheeks. At least, in Italy, they do because they have a very specific word for that.

Learning Italian. One word at a time.

Got a ways to go …

Lucy

David said...

2. I've already told Kim and Oliver. Groans ensued. I will take that as a success and press on.

Dad jokes are wonderful things.

11. Yeah, I forget sometimes that my own experiences are not universal. Sigh. You mean to tell me I'm not the Standard by which all else is measured? I shall have to sit down for a while and contemplate this news. ;)

Cacio e pepe is basically Roman mac-n-cheese except with much better ingredients. It has four: pecorino Romano cheese, black pepper, good pasta, and water. And the directions are pretty straightforward. But if you don't do it exactly right the sauce clumps up into rubbery cheese blobs. I'm getting better at it.

Amatriciana is a tomato-based sauce with guanciale and red pepper flakes. If you like that sort of thing, that's the sort of thing you'll like. I'm in that group, fortunately.

I love the idea that only Italian pigs have cheeks. Honestly, I don't know if there are any other languages with a specific word for them. In English they're usually referred to as hog jowls, and "jowl" is a much more general word.

I'd also like to learn Italian, in addition to Spanish. I say this as an abstract desire, about which I am doing absolutely nothing at the moment. Paving material on the road to hell, and all that.

LucyInDisguise said...

11. Okay, now you’ve got my attention. I was completely unaware that there was such a thing as a Romano cheese made from goat’s milk - I will have to investigate this … most cheeses made from goat’s milk taste odd to me. I can do Mac & Cheese two to three times a year, but I’ve got to really be craving it. And it has to come out of a box - Mac & Cheese made with actual cheese makes me sick. Literally. Allow me to explain …

WARNING: minor hijack ahead:

Cows and I do not get along. At all. I was raised on goat’s milk because my mother found out early that I do not tolerate cow’s milk. I eat breakfast cereals dry. Bovine dairy just devastates me. There are very few types of cheese that I can tolerate. Ice cream, though adored, will make me suffer for three or more days. Worse, spoiled dairy products like sour cream instantly trigger my gag reflex, even if it is my wife putting it on her baked potato.

I’ve spent my entire life joyously eating beef in some sort of weird revenge for what cow’s milk does to me. My revenge usually takes the form of a nice, thick, 16 oz, well-marbled, medium rare Porter House or T-bone steak. Ribs are particularly enjoyable because I get to gnaw on the bones. It could be said that I (What is that word? Give me a minute … I’ll be right back …)

Thanks for waiting … It could be said that I execrate* cows. There are other words that might also describe it, but fall short of actually getting the point across. Three years working a 200 cow/calf operation on a ranch in Wyoming will do that to any sane, modestly observant human being. There is a reason why we eat cows. Yes, there is a very good reason.

Cows: demonstrably the Stupidest Animals on the Planet™.

Lucy

* No - read that again - not excrete - well, maybe that too!

David said...

Bill Bryson once said that cows were the perfect pets. They're big and mostly gentle, they've got lovely sad eyes, and when you get tired of them you can eat them.

Speaking as a guy who enjoys beef, I'm all for eating cows. I don't have the personal beef with them (I kill me...) that you do, but several years of dating a vegetarian in my younger days did nothing to change that. I tend toward burgers, chili, bulgogi, and the occasional medium-well steak, but yeah. Beef is good.

Although we've had the discussion on what the Stupidest Animals on the Planet are and we will have to respectfully disagree as I maintain my position that those are domestic turkeys. Cows will eat without being trained.

Pecorino comes from pecora which means "sheep" in Italian, not goat, though. Does sheep's milk work for you? If it does let me know and I'll send you the recipe for the next occasion when mac-n-cheese appeals to you!

LucyInDisguise said...

So, I went out on the internet this morning bound and determined to find sufficient evidence from a reputable source to prove my point.

What I found was this: I’m either going to have to concede the point, or narrow the statement. Not one to easily concede …

Cows: demonstrably the Stupidest Mammals on the Planet™.

So there. 😛

(I blame my ignorance on an eighth-grade biology teacher who never cleared up the subject of Taxonomy in my youth-addled brain.)

Sheep’s Milk? Ewe. (<<< See what I did there? 😁) I really can’t say - I’ve never tried it, primarily due to unavailability, I would suspect. I’ve never seen it in the store, but then, I don’t recall ever having to look for it, so there is that …

Bulgogi sounds intriguing. My wife doesn’t particularly care for Korean cuisine - generally too spicy for her (but then, ketchup is generally too spicy for her … ouch! Forgot to duck!) My wife is going to the Salty Town for about 10 days, So I have some time to experiment! Bulgogi sounds like something I can handle, so I’ve downloaded a couple of recipes, I have a 16 oz Prime New York cut and all the ingredients for the marinade (except the Asian pear0 all ready to go, so I’m going to find me an Asian pear and see what that’s all about.

Lucy

David said...

No problem on the double post - I've taken care of it. Technology: what doesn't quite work.

Yeah, I'll go with that for cows. I think we have a mutually agreeable settlement. :)

I don't know what kind of availability you have for pecorino Romano out in your corner of the world, but it's not a particularly unusual cheese - you do have to watch because most American Romano is cow's milk. It has to say "pecorino" on it. It gives it a sharper flavor.

I can honestly say that I've never used an Asian pear in bulgogi - the recipe I have has ground beef, soy glaze, ginger, garlic, sesame oil, green beans, and rice, among other things. I usually throw in gojuchang, which is reasonably spicy. It's a quick, easy meal that makes good leftovers - what more can one ask. Let me know how your recipe turns out!