A Beautiful Beautiful… Thing.

Oh, and I ordered Deus Ex: Human Revolution, juuuuust coming in under the wire as a pre-order and getting the tactical pack (nifty weapons and in-game credits unlocks).   So in two days, it will be here.  Yay!  Talk about waiting till the last moment.

May it be a damn sight better than Duke Pukem: Never.

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I am inspiration-less.  Be patient with me.  Been a rough week.  Still numb-er than I would like (left hand) and the left arm and neck pain is still there (no, it is not a heart-attack).   Not a lot can be done about it besides piss and moan, so I piss and moan.

The Dude is a rock.  He sent me this gorgeous haute cuisine photograph.  It is just gorgeous.  As in “I could gorge on that”.

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My Granddad used to always say, “Lemur, I don’t eat guts.  Don’t eat guts, Lemur.”   He clearly mentioned that our family had a long history of not eating offal/organs from critters when there were so many other tasty parts.

I have diverged from his paths on occasion.  I like liverwurst.  I like menudo.  But generally I try to stay away from guts.

Which is why I never eat placenta.  I just don’t do it.  If it’s human placenta, isn’t that cannibalism?  How about if it is your placenta?  Is it wrong or just really frakkin’ gross?   Really?  Seriously?   The Placenta Cookbook?

Holy sh*t-sucking leeches, Batman…

Mark Kristal, a behavioral neuroscientist at the University of Buffalo, is the country’s leading (and quite possibly only) authority on placentophagia, the practice of placenta consumption. He has been researching the phenomenon for twenty years, and concludes that it must offer “a fundamental biological advantage” to all mammals. What this advantage is, he writes in one of his papers, “is still a mystery … in fact, a double mystery. We are not sure either of the immediate causes … nor are we sure of the consequences of the behavior.”

Well, we don’t even know what the advantages are, but it sure seems to make more sense to eat it because it seems like the creepier something is when we eat it the better it ought to be for you, right?

The guy just wanders in and out, though.

According to Kristal, the first recorded placentophagia movement in America began in the seventies, when people residing in communes would cook up a placenta stew and share it among themselves. “It’s a New Age phenomenon,” he explains. “Every ten or twenty years people say, ‘We should do this because it’s natural and animals do it.’ But it’s not based on science. It’s a fad.”

I knew a couple families when I was growing up that were like this.  They wove their own clothes out of hair from their bodies combined with yak-teat fuzz for some of the softest underclothes ever – well, softest ever relative to the hemp burlap they normally recycled into their garments.  These people also made huts out of straw and cow manure, smoked dried moss, and thought urine was a fantastic aphrodisiac.

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Cooking with Fire, the Man’s Way.

Update:  Fixing Your Hernia, the Man’s Way.  This guy has guts.

It is absolutely impossible for someone to fix their own hernia.  – Sam Carvajal, a surgeon at Glendale Adventist Medical Center

Might have saved some pain and suffering if the guy had checked that little fact out ahead of time.

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Real men don’t use BBQ’s… they use the wheel from their car… the one that a woman ruined for him at just 1092 miles (ten days old) by pulling out in front of him without even looking.

Yes, the real man will use an aluminum rim from a 2003 Nissan Maxima.

They pack that sucker with a few bricks, throw in some play-sand from the kid’s sandbox, dump a buttload of natural wood charcoal (not briquettes), wedge in a peanut-oil-soaked paper towel to light the whole mess, and walk away.  They just don’t sit there and play with their wood when there’s meat to be beat.

Stealing one’s wife’s hairdryer works wonders once the meat has been seen to.  The blowing job gets the charcoal hot enough to shoe a horse.  Granted, we’re here to eat cow, but damn tootin’ you could do some serious work with that fire.  But the work we’re here to do is cook some cow, because we’re meatitarians, dammit.  That meat pic will get larger if you stroke click it.

That cow gets 2-1/2 minutes per side while immersed in the infero of Hades (center pic).   The meat is thrown DIRECTLY on the charcoal.  Be a man, flick it off if you don’t like it.  It’s not gonna bite ya, that little piece of carbon sitting there smoldering at 3000F.

Note:  Actually, it might bite you.  I flicked it with my index finger.  I hooked my finger and did a stabbing down motion to get the charcoal off of the meat.   It allowed me to scrape red hot coals under my fingernail where it resulted in a burn that lasted for hours.  This stuff is really hot folks, don’t just play with it.

If you like extra char, just run that hairdryer right in the middle of the pile of coals and believe me, things will happen.  Blow jobs always make things happen.

I will tell you this:  If you eat it my way as a guest and you tell me that you really would rather have salt and pepper on it, I will give it to you but I will never respect you.  That meat was sublime without a thing added to it.

And the next day, slapped between pieces of bread is a religious experience.  But hey what do I know?

I’ll make more comments on it more tomorrow when I’m awake.

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It’s not a bad question.

Update: Huh.  Hit counter… 199,425 hits.

Who knew there were so many cases of bored people?

Update #2: Oh f*** me in both ears.

D&D in Prisons Could Lead to Gang Activity.  Didn’t we already live through this happy bullsh** with Tom Hank’s stoopid-beyond-belief D&D version of  “Reefer Madness”?

I say that as one whose mother tossed all his D&D books in a dumpster somewhere while he was at school.

Update #3: Oh please.  She was not jailed for sending her kids to a better school.  She was jailed for breaking the law by lying on her paperwork.  The mechanics were different but it’s not much different than holding up stores to pay for your kid’s school.  It’s taking money that isn’t yours.

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I freely admit:  I love Taco Bell.

An engineer I worked with for a year said something about it that I’ll never forget.

Why Taco Bell?  Because it’s cheaper than food.

That was a pretty profound statement but I’d still eat the stuff every day if I could.

I’ve found the latest lawsuit to be both funny and puzzling.  Funny because, well, you get it.

Puzzling, because it still tastes pretty good.

Me? I'm rooting for Taco Bell.

I am loving PhotoShop.  I’ve always been bullish on open-source and freeware but I’m a convert.  There’s a good reason why it’s as popular as it is.  Been saving for it forever and finally was able to justify buying the package.

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A New Recipe

I thought maybe from here on out I would start taking pitchers of all the dishes I post recipes for.  The better to entice y’all over to the dark side of the kitchen.   The force can be used for good or evil, so why not make it fantastically and hedonistically evil?  And tasty.

This is a meal I prepared a few nights ago.  It worked really nicely.  It was based on a recipe from Jackie Passmore, who is a fantastic lady. Her recipe used bean threads and black vinegar as two components that I did not have.  I am finding more and more that asian cooking is quite flexible and this was no exception.  Her recipe was Bean Threads Stir-Fried with Sichuan Spiced Beef.

So consider my recipe to be a tribute to Ms. Passmore and her book “The Noodle Shop Cookbook“.

My recipe would be more like Bhan Pho Noodles Stir-Fried with Spiced Beef in Black Bean Paste.  See the difference?  Embiggen the pic below by clicking on it.

Bhan Pho Noodles Stir-Fried with Spiced Beef in Black Bean Paste

So here we go.

Bhan Pho Noodles Stir-Fried with Spiced Beef in Black Bean Paste

The Main Ingredients:

• 1/2 lb rice noodles (bhan pho)
• 10-12 oz lean beef, finely slivered
• 1 red bell pepper, slivered
• 1 onion, slivered
• 3T oil
• Scallions – 1 bunch

Seasoning:

• 2 tsp minced fresh ginger
• 2 T minced garlic
• 1 T dark soy sauce
• 1 T chile paste in oil
• 1-1/2 tsp sugar
• 1 T rice wine vinegar
• 2 tsp sesame oil
• 1 T black bean paste

Sauce:

• 1/4 C chicken stock
• 2 tsp mirin (sweet cooking wine)
• 2 tsp black bean paste
• 1-1/2 tsp tamari
• 1-1/2 tsp rice wine vinegar
• 2 tsp corn starch

Mix the slivered beef with the seasoning ingredients, set aside for 30 minutes.

Cook the pho for time indicated on the package (about 5 minutes for my noodles).  Drain them and rince them in cold water to cool them off.

Heat the wok to screaming hot.  Add 1 Tbs of the oil and when the oil just starts to smoke, add the peppers and onion and fry them for 30-40 seconds.  Pull aside, reserve in serving dish.

Heat another 1 Tbs oil.  Fry the beef and the seasoning ingredients until the beef is fully cooked, adding the scallions just before the beef is done.  Add in the veggies, mix beef and veggies well and return them to the serving bowl again.

Add remaining oil to the wok.  Stir fry the noodles briefly, add the sauce, and stir until the sauce is just absorbed.  Add the beef and veggies back into the wok, stir well to combine, and pour all back into serving bowl.

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I loathe My Pretty Pony™ yet I have them lying around the house and tolerate them for the sake of my daughter, GirlHead.

That doesn’t mean I can’t use them for my entertainment purposes.

Pretty Punky Pony

Next, I shall rain fire down upon Care Bears™.

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Gas Price Map is Noteworthy – and the Decline of Real Men

GAS PRICES. How about them, eh?

I’m not going to bitch about them. They are what they are. Go buy a smaller vehicle. Eat out less. Carpool. Take a bus. Anything. Quit bitching about it. I know they’re high, I pay the same prices. It’s largely driven by supply/demand, speculation on tomorrow’s prices for gas required to replace todays usage, and taxes.

Do take a look at this map. Notice how the gas prices which include taxes are highest in the most liberal states? If you want to ask why the prices are high, don’t forget to ask why your gas TAXES are excessively high while you are at it. These red states (some of them) are also big users of the so-called bouquet formulations, which add cost as well. Typically these formulations are also driven by environmental concerns… which come from… where? Figure it out.

(Hint: If you are poor and being dragged into the ground – and vote liberal – ask the people you helped vote into power why they are adding fuel to the fire in making your life hell.)

(source of this snapshot: http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx)

And please, for the love of dog, quit it already with the “Oil Companies are Making Profits at Our Expense! It’s DEMONIC!” One claim I heard was that they make about $0.09 profit per gallon. They sell obscene amounts of gas to us guzzlers. Ergo, they make “obscene profits”. Please, do try to be more intelligent than a pet rock.

Anybody ever notice the similarity? DEMOcrat and DEMOnic… only off by a few letters. Not saying anything, just ponderin’.

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They SAY it is not to avoid offending anyone but I’m sorry, that stinks of, well, BS. Hope BS isn’t offensive to anyone.

British Airways takes beef off the menu to avoid offending Hindus

For decades the national dish has been a staple meal on the national carrier.

But now British Airways has taken beef off the menu for economy passengers amid concerns about its “religious restrictions”.

The airline has instead switched to a fish pie or chicken dish option for the so-called “cattle class” passengers.

BA’s second-biggest long-haul market is to India, where the majority Hindu population do not eat beef because of their beliefs. (more…)

REAL men would have said “There are other dishes, choose one of them or get a bag of pretzels. Deal wth it.”

I’m going to come right out and say it: “Have we collectively lost our damn MINDS?”

I don’t drink alcohol, it’s my problem, not yours – if you want to drink it, have at!

“It has nothing to do with the fear of causing offence – we always offer alternative meals for people with special dietary requirements if they order in advance.

“We are still serving beef based meals on certain menus in First Class and Club World and are currently deciding on whether or not to use beef on the menus for World Traveller customers for the winter season.”

The Hindu Council UK said: “The Hindu community will welcome this decision and the news it has been made partly because Hindus don’t eat beef.

“Hindus have a great deal of respect for British culture and are well integrated into the British way of life, so it’s good to see evidence of how they are literally flying the British flag by choosing British Airways.

“That said, Hindus are tolerant of the beliefs of others and do not expect everyone to stop eating a food because they do not eat it.”

In the past three months world beef prices have risen from about £2,500 a tonne to more than £4,000 a tonne, largely because of the weakening dollar and rising feed costs.

BA also said that cost is not a reason for the decision to stop serving beef.

Now we’re getting somewhere. Namely we have gotten NOWHERE. “It has nothing to do with causing offence” and “cost is not a reason for the decision to stop serving beef.”

So what the hell IS the reason? We can only serve two options is NOT a good reason – double the veggies and make it a vegetarian meal (bitch about that, why don’t you?). Great, what if MY religion doesn’t allow me to eat fish or chicken? Gonna stop that, too? What if I just don’t LIKE fish or chicken, and they make me want to barf? My point is stop trying to be so damned accommodating by chopping out options for everybody else.

C’mon people, join me in eating a cow today. March right out the door, get into your car, drive to the nearest Wendy’s/McDonald’s, Burker King, Dairy Queen, or whatever, and eat not one, but TWO burgers.

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