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It's also got every tag I have -- this is because my current LJ style doesn't include a tag index. (At least half of my participation on LJ is on my Treo. I chose this style because it loads quickly and it's still readable on a small screen.)
I'd tell you more about myself, but that's what my profile -- and the rest of my journal -- are for.
I just made a really unusual fruit salad. The ingredients are two or three handfuls of cranberries (uncooked, straight out of the bag), a lemon, three limes, and an orange. Oh, and I zested the orange and one of the limes.
Pretty, innit? But let's face it, that combination of sour fruit, sour fruit, and more sour fruit is pretty much inedible to most people, and even the inclusion of one non-sour fruit isn't likely to help. Of course, there is this one substance that temporarily alters your taste buds, making sour things taste sweet.
On that note, I'd like to mention that I really love ThinkGeek right now!
Warning: Do not click these links before going to bed. I'd rather not be responsible for your loss of sleep.
You may have heard of ikizukuri. Even if you don't know it by name, you've probably heard of it -- it's kinda controversial. Well, ikizukuri is normally raw, for obvious reasons, but someone's somehow managed to apply the concept to fried food as well. Why they did it, I have no idea, though I'm sure some sort of infernal pact was involved.
The video is here. Do yourself a favor, and don't watch it. I'd have posted it on wtf_inc, which is where it belongs, but someone beat me to the punch by about two hours. (I've only made one post there, but it was a doozie, and I am still waiting for something to come along to outdo it.)
You guys know Burger King, don't you? Long-time purveyors of boiled cowshit on greasy bread, masquerading as food? Creators of super-creepy ads with Burger-Klingons twisting people's nipples and kicking them in the nuts? Well, apparently, their latest ad campaign seeks to equate their meat sandwiches with oral sex.
Personally, I disagree. Oral sex is much better than any of that garbage you'd ever find on the Burger King menu -- and much healthier, too! Admittedly, not all guys have seven inches -- in fact, most guys don't¹ -- but that doesn't make oral sex any less great, and it doesn't make Burger King any more edible!
(For those of you who are new here, the icon in this post is the censored version of this icon (NSFW!), which I use in case any of you look at your friends list at work. In a couple of weeks, I'll switch it to the uncensored version.)
Kinsey's studies claim that the average is six inches, but he allowed his test subjects to measure themselves, and men are notoriously dishonest on this issue. Later studies in which test subjects were measured by third parties put the average closer to five inches.
I took a lot of notes in my smartphone at BayCon, partly because I knew that I'd be drunk at the parties and thus unlikely to remember everything. Well, that's not entirely true. Let's face it, I was surrounded by geeks, and neat ideas were flying all over the place: good quotes, recommended books, tasty foods and drinks I haven't tried yet, the list goes on and on.
I've still got the codebreakers working on parts of my notes -- between sleep deprivation and intoxication, some of my notes are a little sloppy. Still, I captured a lot more than I would have without these notes. A few samples below:
Notes on Music:
I ended up chatting with about two or three people on music quite a bit. My notes here are a little fragmentary, but they're enough to summon more complete memories, or if not, I can punch them into Wikipedia and learn more. For instance, one of my notes was "helicopter quartet." This led me to the Helikopter-Streichquartett by Stockhausen, and then, "oh, yeah! That gent told me a lot about Stockhausen! I'm going to have to look that up!"
Some of the talk got very detailed, even arcane. You know how it's possible for engineers to completely geek out with each other, getting so technical that everyone who isn't also an engineer is completely left behind? Music theory can be just as bad. There was one chat with me, jon_decles, and one other gent whose name I don't remember, but I ended up chatting about Indian Music Theory with him last year -- and the three of us ended up driving all the non-music geeks off without realizing it.
Notes on Alcohol:
Noble fir vodka: I have no idea who came up with this, nor what possessed bovil to try it, but I'm very glad he tried it, and was then eager to share it.
Ginger liqueur (Koval, I think): Needed more ginger, but trust me to say that.
Caol Ila: this is one of the really smoky whiskeys -- it's a slightly lighter Talisker, for lack of a better way to describe it.
Ardbeg: For a moment, this one tastes really smooth and gentle. Then, it whacks you with a hammer and yells in your ear: "Ha ha, I'm smokier than Laphroaig!" Wonderful, wonderful stuff.
Glenmorangie: I tried a bunch of these at the Whiskey Brothers party. This was an education! All Glenmorangie is made by a single process, but aged differently -- a batch that's aged in barrels that were originally used for sherry is going to taste different from a batch aged in port barrels, and I took this as my chance to find out how. (They're all good, if way too mild for my tastes.)
Glen Kinchie: Very gentle. It's a little like Dalmore in how gentle it is, but it smells wonderful.
Vanilla Whiskey: apparently really damned popular. I shared this with several people, most of who really liked it. If I bring a hip-flask next year, this is what's going in it.
Notes on Food:
Edible flowers. Have never really gotten into them, but now I should. Violets are apparently criminally underrated.
Macapuno is a variety of fucked-up mutant coconut. Where most normal coconuts have crunchy meat and water inside, a macapuno has no water, and its meat is gelatinous. I've never heard of it, but thanks to caprine, I now need to find some, and then find a use for it. Apparently they're wicked good in ice cream. Terrific! I have a couple of friends with ice cream makers.
If farmount offers you chocolate... say yes, you idiot!
If elaryn offers you homemade toffee... say yes, you idiot!
A while back, I posted a link to a website called This Is Why You're Fat: a site that shows pictures of unbelievably disgusting food that'll kill you if you actually eat it. Well, someone who saw this site was inspired to make a site going equally way too far, but in the opposite direction: This Is Why You're Thin.
Okay, I tell a lie. Some of the stuff on This Is Why You're Thin actually looks edible. This, for instance, looks really damned good -- but then, it's got strawberries, kiwis, and mangoes on it, and you just can't fail with that combination. On the other hand, you have to try really hard to mess up a pizza, and yet, this one manages it.
(I have both thisiswhythin and whyyourefat on my friends list. They're both occasionally trainwrecky, just at different ends of the spectrum.)
This Ḥanukkah Cake, as she calls it, is apparently in the same episode of Semihomemade as the infamous Kwanzaa Cake. (A few seconds into the clip, you can see the Kwanzaa Cake.)
About forty-five seconds in, she puts marshmallows in the center. The good news is that marshmallows don't clash with the other ingredients of her cake the same way that chocolate frosting clashes with apple pie filling. The bad news is that properly observant Jews don't eat marshmallows during Ḥanukkah. Or any other time, for that matter.
It's not even noon, and I need a drink. Fortunately, it seems Sandra Lee is good at drinks.
A while back, I discovered Sandra Lee. Well, not quite -- lysana mentioned them to me in this post, and I eventually exploded over here. Sure, it could be argued that I overreacted -- in fact, a few of you argued just that -- but I was seriously appalled that Sandra Lee actually had a show.
Anyway, I bring this up because I'm starting to get the feeling that Sandra Lee is the goatse of cooking shows -- just as you never forget the first time you were goatse'ed, you never forget your first exposure to Kwanzaa cake. I'm sure that Jesse Taylor over at pandagon won't forget either. And this rant is superior to mine -- I couldn't find video at the time I first posted on this subject, and for all the mean-spirited attacks I made on her, I didn't think to call her a "domestic failorist."
This shit'll kill ya!
And on the subject of absurd, edible-but-only-technically food, I give you the website this is why you're fat: a collection of jumbo-sized food atrocities from all over the net. It's all here, as far as I can tell: the Bacon Explosion, Bacon Explosion Wellington, deep fried candy bars, pizza with toppings ranging from corn dogs to big macs, Turducken with bacon layers, a messy chili dog combining wagyu beef and crushed Fritos (why, god, why?), krispy kreme donut-bacon-cheeseburgers, and many more crimes against both food and humanity.
I've looked at every foodstuff on the site, and alternated between howling with laughter and adopting the fetal position on the floor. Not that I expect that all of these things are being eaten at once. Some of them, like the 30x-stuff oreo, and the two-foot-cube rice crispy treat, were clearly made for fun.
OMFG, I'm dyeing!
Oh, and one last food-related thing. A while ago, I tried beets, and rather liked them. I did notice one odd side-effect of eating them, though.
Y'see, there's this stuff in beets called betanin (C24H27N2O13), a natural reddish dye -- it's what gives beets their characteristic dark red color. I was careful not to touch the beets with my hands as I was steaming them, and in fact used a plate instead of a cutting board so that I wouldn't permanently stain the cutting board, because beet juice stains everything.
Anyway, betanin is a strong dye, but relatively harmless, and it's apparently also an antioxidant. In most people, it's broken down, but sometimes, in some people, it goes from one end of the digestive system to the other without breaking down. Then they go to the bathroom, and suddenly become very alarmed...
When a sausage recipe involves two pounds of ground sausage and two pounds of bacon, you can be reasonably sure I won't touch it. Still, just because I have no taste for the finer things in life, should other people be denied their pork-fat nirvana? Should I refuse to post a bizarre spectacular recipe, just because I once described one of its primary ingredients as one of the most disgusting alleged foodstuffs on the planet? No, of course not! Oh, and once you've recovered from the massive coronary that this recipe will give you, try this one! And you can use this to wash it down!
(Found on Sensible Erection, as well as linked by two friends completely independent of each other.)
In other food-related news, I'm thinking about getting a bag or two of raw cranberries, a bag of limes, some beer, some black coffee, and some of these things!
For those of you who think that bacon goes well with everything, I offer a music video by Morbid Anal Fog. This song's called "Nokturnal Bacon Throne." It's probably not quite safe for work, and you may want to gouge out your eyes after seeing it. Or, you'll think, "nice chair. Needs bacon salt and baconnaise."
Disclaimer: I have not tried this recipe. In fact, I consider bacon to be one of the most disgusting alleged foodstuffs on the planet, so it's highly unlikely that I will ever try this recipe. I post this recipe here only for the sake of science, and because I'm very much aware that people-who-hate-bacon are a very small minority.
Ingredients: 1000 g milk 1000 g cream 750 g egg yolks 625 g sugar 6 strips of cooked bacon
Instructions: • Thoroughly cook bacon, keep warm. • Bring milk and cream to a boil. • Add bacon to the hot dairy. • Cover and infuse for 4 hours. • Strain out bacon. • Bring baconed dairy back to a boil. • Whisk yolk and sugar together. • Temper hot dairy into yolks mixture. • Pour back into the dairy. • Cook over low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon till it reaches nappe (coats the spoon). • Cool over an ice bath. • Spin in an ice cream machine.
Generally, I try to organize my Con-related posts, so that I'm not spamming you guys with shitloads of "OMFG I had so much fun" posts. Sadly, this year I really can't, so I'm wrapping it all up here. Yes, I'm leaving a lot out. It can't be helped.
I had a couple of chats with a couple of friends I know online, but I only end up seeing once a year. In addition to just having a lot of fun chatting, I got some interesting new insights into [Igor]'s habit of stealing small parts from my shop, before we caught him and told him never to come back. (Try to imagine a grown-up and homeless Linus, from the comic strip Peanuts, stealing from Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Now picture him as a long-unemployed electronic engineer.) In addition to this, they discovered a terrific pizza joint, and took me there for lunch. Tony & Alba's. I recommend them highly, and these friends liked them enough that they ate there three times over the weekend. Damned good stuff!
For those of you unfamiliar, Regency Dancing is a lot like square dancing, except it looks a lot more elegant, and the music is much better. I'd never done it before because I have this fear of looking silly and/or incompetent, but I decided that this was a stupid thing to fear, so I did a running tackle on it. It turns out that the fear was needless: it's easy to learn, and a lot of fun. And yes, unless you've been at it for a while, you will look silly, but so will a bunch of people around you, so lighten the hell up.
There was a panel on coping with Drama Llamas, which I attended mostly to pick up pointers just in case I ran into [Brad] and [Janet] again. Of course, I never saw them. Please note that I'm not saying that they weren't in attendance -- only that I never saw them. For all I know, they weren't there. Or just as likely, they avoided me. Or just as likely, they were having so much fun they forgot about me completely, and fate just decided that we didn't need to run into each other. I find I'm hoping for that third option. We've had more than enough of each other already -- why reopen old wounds?
Saw some neat stuff in the Art Show. Todd Lockwood was the Artist Guest of Honor, and his work definitely lived up to the title. Still, I got to check out a bunch of other artists. Some of them were amazing. And of couse, some of them were so bad they made me wonder why I put down my color pencils, because I could do ten times better in my sleep. And then I remember that I put down my color pencils some time after I started getting good on guitar. Go many arts, so little time...
I'm not generally fond of pornography (all that web design work killed whatever appreciation for it I might have had), but I do enjoy watching artists put one toenail over the line between Art-with-a-capital-A and pornography. My favorite examples of this were Sarah Clemens' "Patron Saints of Pornography" (NSFW) series, combining well-done nudity with sly, gutter-level humor (though the quadruple-dragon-nipple-piercing was a little too hardcore for my tastes). Well, those, and a couple of Sandra Santara's centerfolds. Her vision of Odin (NSFW) also dances on that Art/Porn line -- he's certainly arty. He's also discreetly, but unmistakably erect. And hot. (What? I'm straight, I'm not blind!)
I also tried to donate blood. (Every year, there's a blood-van in front of the hotel.) To save both my time, and the time of the warm-hearted vampires with the needles, I asked for a list of disqualifications, and found that it hasn't changed -- I'm still, more or less, permanently on the "please don't donate... ever" list. (I've shot up once. I also have male partners. Either of these alone is a permanent disqualification, no matter how careful I am about it.)
Lest we forget... every Monday morning at BayCon, there's a panel celebrating the lives of the people who've died since the previous BayCon. This panel is hosted by an old friend of mine, and a nice guy to whom I used to sell comics on a regular basis. This year was a bad year: Arthur Clarke, Utah Phillips, Robert Asprin, Steve Gerber (Howard the Duck), and Rory Root, among many others. My con experience is as much wall-to-wall fun as I can cram into it, with the exception of this panel. I can't say I have fun at it, per se, but I feel better for having attended it.
Sadly, there are things I didn't get to do. There always are. I missed Rocky Horror because I was low on sleep, and I missed Eye of Argon because I was on the party floor and forgot about it entirely.
There are also people I didn't get to see. Again, sadly, there always are. This year, they include a couple of friends whom I'd apparently successfully cajoled into showing up, but I never get a chance to say hi. There's also a friend I kept an eye out for, and I didn't remember until after the con that she was in Con Ops. There are others, but if you're reading this, you know who you are.
After the Con, I always feel a hint of sadness as I have to return to the real world. This makes me especially grateful for the blast I'd been having the last few days, and I always swear that next year, I'll have at least as much fun. (And next year, I simply won't bother with the elevators. I was on the sixth floor, and half the time I went to and from my hotel room, it was faster to use the damned stairs.)
Anyway, this concludes my batch of posts for BayCon 2008. I now return you to our regular programming.
The Black Oven: a website for would-be bakers and pastry-chefs who love black metal way too much. So far, it only has a few recipes; it's only been around for a few months. I have no doubt, however, that it will garner a mighty army of black-souled fanatics and that one day, its catalog of infernal recipes will take over the world, bwa ha ha ha ha ha...!
Ahem. Sorry. Got carried away, there.
(With thanks to ms_daisy_cutter, who saw this and decided that I simply had to see it.)
I got a wild hair up my, well, up somewhere, so on my way home, I stopped at the grocery store and made a few impulse purchases. Now, I have a diced mango, a minced habanero, and two knuckles of grated ginger mixed together and sitting in a bowl in the fridge. I'm leaving them all there overnight, so that they can get to know each other. It's probably a little too simple to be properly considered a salsa. I may just pour it over ice cream or something.
This is gonna be so fuckin' awesome!
Edited to add: Well, the ginger was fuckin' pointless -- the habanero completely overpowered it. For that matter, after the first few seconds, the habanero completely overpowered the mango, too. As much as I like hot stuff, this was not a successful experiment.
Did you know that the term "mango" refers to a tango between two men? Well, I didn't. I just learned that a minute ago, and I'm appalled by my own ignorance. Here I was, thinking that a mango was just a yummy, yummy fruit!
But no, a mango is not just a yummy, yummy fruit! It's also a couple of hams!
(Stolen from Plushie Schwartz: pornographer, fursuitter, and spectacular trainwreck. (And obviously not safe for work, home, or anywhere else.) His blog is hilariously awful, an endless font of what-the-fuckery and laughter, and it's all ms_daisy_cutter's fault I'm reading it and howling.)
Holy shucking fit, bread wank. People really will argue about anything.
How anal do you really have to be to tell someone, "your bread recipe is wrong, and let me tell you why," over the internet? And then argue with people about it for at least five hours? I admit this seems to have garnered schlake a whole lot of internet fame -- he's made it to otf_wank, domestic_snark, stupid_free, and sf_drama -- but who wants that kind of fame?
On the other hand, I did savage Sandra Lee's tiramisu recipe a while back, so perhaps I really shouldn't talk. But come on, it used prepackaged vanilla pudding!
Edited to add: It just got worse. He's arguing that Challah isn't really bread, to a rabbi's daughter! What a maroon!
This is the funniest advertisement I've seen in months! The fireballs, the bad black metal, the worse corpsepaint... and to top it all off, the band apparently decided to name themselves after a typeface! (Of course, their band logo is set in a typeface with serifs, and Helvetica doesn't have those... but hey, I'll give them points just for having a band logo that isn't completely fucking unreadable!)
Unfortunately, it's in Canada. Here in the United States, we're all apparently wussie wusses who can't handle any seasoning with more bite than cinnamon.
(Now this is how viral marketing is supposed to work -- I saw the ad, nearly pissed myself laughing, and then decided to inflict it on the rest of you! Lather, rinse, repeat, all over the internet!)
So, in some fancy-shmancy restaurant, someone got a receipt that had the phrase "suck my dick fuck-face" on it. Now apparently, the person who found this on her receipt was offended by this, wanting a written apology and some additional "compensation."
Personally, if I received a receipt like this, I'd have burst from laughing so hard. Then, depending on my company at the time, I'd have shown it to everyone at the table. Because that comment was, in all likelihood, not directed at me. More likely, it's the latest volley in an exchange between the cooks and the waitstaff, who are either trying to crack each other up, or genuinely feuding. But either way, I'd keep the receipt. Hell, I'd frame the damned thing.
For some reason, this reminds me of one of my friends who went to a restaurant at which you ordered food by saying self-affirming things to the waiters: "I am confident" for one dish, "I am fabulous" for another, and so on. Each menu item had instructions like these for ordering it. Then, when the waiter comes out with your food, he or she would say "you are confident" or "you are fabulous," depending on what you ordered.
It also makes me think of a different kind of restaurant: one in which all of the menu items are encoded, as with that high-end vegan reataurant my friend was raving about, but with a different code-scheme completely...
Waiter: "What the fuck are you assholes doing here?" ("Hello, welcome to Playful Words. May I take your order?")
Male Cust.: "Piss off, you fudgepacking cunt." ("Absolutely. I'd like a glass of lemonade, the sushi sampler platter, and some chocolate cheesecake for dessert.")
Waiter: "Stop talking so big in front of your ho, she's not impressed." ("Certainly. And for madame?")
Female Cust.: "Go to hell, you cocksucking piece of shit." ("Hmm. I think I'll have the hotwings, the polish sausage, and some pudding for dessert!")
Waiter: "What did you just say?" ("Very good, miss. And to drink?")
Female Cust.: "What, are you deaf? Piss off!" ("Lemonade sounds good.")
Waiter: "I'm not taking this shit from you! Get out before I call the police!" ("Thank you. I'll be back with your food shortly.")
(Two minutes later...)
Waiter: "Piss off, both of you!" ("Here are your lemonades.")
(Ten minutes later...)
Waiter: "Here, you loudmouthed cunt!" ("Thank you for waiting. Here's your sushi platter.")
Waiter: "And here, you cocksucker!" ("And here's your polish sausage. Enjoy your meal, I'll be back with your desserts shortly.")
Female Cust.: "What the hell is this shit?" ("Thank you. Oh, yes, I also ordered hotwings.")
Waiter: "Go to hell!" ("Those are on the way.")
(Ten minutes later...)
Waiter: "Here ya go, fudgepacker!" ("Your chocolate cheesecake, sir.")
Waiter: "And here, you piece of shit!" ("And your pudding, miss.")
I can only being to imagine what form the conversation would take if someone got an order wrong, or if the waiter had to come back and explain that they're out of chocolate cheesecake...
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