Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Barbecue Tips from The Master

OK, being somewhat ostentatious. I take grilling pretty seriously, though, and I don't have many complaining customers....so here are the tips:

  • Ribs take 2-3 hours of indirect heat to properly cook. Douse with sauce every 30 minutes. Forget the packaging and a lot of cookbooks that say an hour or less. They are full of crap.
  • The best chicken parts to cook are the breasts. Start them meat side down for 5 minutes over medium coals, then flip them and close the grill with medium vents for 45 minutes more. Marinate on the flip.
  • If you're looking, it ain't cooking. Do not open a closed grill in time increments any less than 30 minutes.
  • Shellfish, ie shrimp, seem to love flame. Put them on while there's still flame in the coals - two minutes. Take them off, wait 10 minutes, and finsih them with 2 more minutes on a more relaxed fire.
  • Never ever ever use Wal-Mart large (60% larger!) coals. These coals SUCK. They flare up and then suicide with ash and you won't get more than 30-45 minutes good heat out of them.
  • Sauce secret: Go to an Asian market and buy some Srirasha - a Thai chili garlic sauce. Also have on hand some molasses. Mix about a cup of KC Masterpiece with 2 TBS of Thai and about 4 TBS of molasses. Use that as your sauce. Ooooo.....baby!

Friday, December 15, 2006

Get Well, Senator Tim Johnson

I don't know you from Adam, but I pray for your speedy recovery. We really don't need the kind of political crap that would happen should you become permanently disabled.

Hang in there, Tim.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Things I Would Love to See (Or Not)

Ever see politicians argue over something and were left screaming at the TV (or net) because they all got it wrong? Yeah, me too. Here's my list of issues that they all have wrong. I, of course, could be wrong too. YMMV.

  • Abortion. It's an individuals right to determine whether abortion is OK with them or not. There shouldn't be laws for or against it at the Federal level as that violates the Constitution. The Constitution clearly states that if it's not specifically enumerated as something deserving Federal oversight, it devolves to the States or the people.
  • Talking points. I think I heard Pelosi say "culture of corruption", literally, a gaxillion times from 2004 to now. I can't think of the GOP equivalent now but I know I've heard it. Can't these fuckwads think for themselves?
  • Gay Marriage. Since when is it reasonable to even consider a Constitutional amendment against gay marriage? That's incredibly stupid. It would give the Federal government the power to regulate peoples personal lives and that's never good. Until fairly recently, the government has no role in marriage: you either got married in a church or were deemed common law after an amount of time of co-habitation. My solution: All civil unions are just that - cilvil unions. Man to woman, man to man, whatever. Marriage is a sacred institution rendered by a church but the legal and civil rights conferred by the state are conferred equally to all.

There are more later.

Things I Would Love to See (Or Not)

Ever see politicians argue over something and were left screaming at the TV (or net) because they all got it wrong? Yeah, me too. Here's my list of issues that they all have wrong. I, of course, could be wrong too. YMMV.

  • Abortion. It's an individuals right to determine whether abortion is OK with them or not. There shouldn't be laws for or against it at the Federal level as that violates the Constitution. The Constitution clearly states that if it's not specifically enumerated as something deserving Federal oversight, it devolves to the States or the people.
  • Talking points. I think I heard Pelosi say "culture of corruption", literally, a gaxillion times from 2004 to now. I can't think of the GOP equivalent now but I know I've heard it. Can't these fuckwads think for themselves?
  • Gay Marriage. Since when is it reasonable to even consider a Constitutional amendment against gay marriage? That's incredibly stupid. It would give the Federal government the power to regulate peoples personal lives and that's never good. Until fairly recently, the government has no role in marriage: you either got married in a church or were deemed common law after an amount of time of co-habitation. My solution: All civil unions are just that - cilvil unions. Man to woman, man to man, whatever. Marriage is a sacred institution rendered by a church but the legal and civil rights conferred by the state are conferred equally to all.

There are more but mainly minor.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

NASA Creates Tenure

Today NASA announced plans to establish a permanent base at the Moon's South Pole. Here's the news story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16042651/

According to the article, this is supposed to occur by 2024.

OK, great, but I'm 46 now and I'll be 64 then. When I was freaking 9 years old we had guys tramping around the moon and were promised that by 1980 we'd have guys at Mars....and moving sidewalks by 1985.

From 1973 through today we have done doo-diddly-squat as far as manned exploration. I got an A on a paper I wrote in college on the death of manned space exploration...in 1983!

Instead, we've focused on a Space Ford Excursion (the Shuttle) since the 1970's. Sure, can haul a lot but gets lousy gas mileage. To top this off we decided that the Space Excursion needed a garage in orbit and hence came the low orbit, underused, overbudget ISS.

The ISS and Shuttle consume mass quantities of NASA budget for a dubious return in science. What does the ISS prove that Mir didn't? Nothing. What science to we get from the Shuttle? Occasional Earth studies and repair trips to Hubble. Bah!

Meanwhile, the rest of NASA has to contend with relatively low budget robotic missions to the other planets where the real action is.

And, God bless 'em, they do great! The Spirit and Opportunity rovers are still tooling around Mars far after the expected design specs. Cassini is doing great as did the little Huygens probe (thanks, ESA!) carried. The Pluto Express is on it's way.

In 2001, these audacious bastards even tried to land an asteroid orbiter on an asteroid when it was low on fuel...and succeeded!

So why don't we do away with the low-orbit shenanigans and marry the astronauts and budget with the visionaries and top engineers carrying out planetary missions? Fuck the moon, I want to see Dave Bowman orbiting Jupiter before I die.

Just tell him to ignore HAL's complaints about the AE-35.

The Feline Frightener

We have a cat who is the most peaceful, serene animal I have ever had. He's actually my daughter's pet and he'll come running the minute she calls. He always sleeps in her bed and nuzzles her on demand.

Actually, he likes everyone to a degree. What's funny is that he isn't terribly loving with anyone if my daughter is in the room - my theory is that he's afraid of making her jealous.

Like all cats, though, he does some irritating things. In his case, it's scratching at the fringes of carpets. We yell "No" and he stops doing it but shortly after forgets it's a bad thing and does it again.

If this was any other animal I'd swat his with a rolled up newspaper while yelling, "No!" and this would get his attention. But he's so sweet I'd hate to do anything that could affect his disposition.

So I have an idea....

Cats are startled by sudden loud noises. They don't like them one bit. Most cats will immediately drop what they're doing and haul ass at a sudden loud noise. What is needed is a good loud noise that is untraceable.

If I took an aluminum beer can and put a couple of dozen BBs into it, it would be loud when shaken or thrown. If I seal the can and then wrap it in light foam it's still loud but now soft.

If I have this can, (I dub thee "Feline Frightener") I can throw it close to the cat when he's misbehaving and he'll freak and stop what he's doing. There are advantages to this approach.

  • If I accidently hit the cat he's unlikely to be hurt because it'll be very light.
  • He won't know where the Frightener came from so he can't trace it back to me. As far as he knows, the Cat God is smiting him for his transgressions.
  • Since the BBs randomly rattle in the can, the noise will be slightly different each time so it'll seem like an animate threat.
  • If I throw it from a different spot each time he'll be even more afraid of it.
  • He will begin to associate the Frightener with any bad behavior and I can use it at any time for any badness.

I base my bulletpoints on the fact that cats are stupid. No, really. They look at you with eyes slitted because they don't have the mental energy to keep them wide open unless directly focused on a straightforward task such as catching squirrels. Which they rarely do because even squirrels are smarter than them. Some cats are good at rats and birds but rats and birds are even stupider than cats.

Some cats are both stupid and deranged. I have known cats that attack strangers without warning; cats that howled for no reason, obsessive-compulsive cats (no shit - one of mine was), and cats that wiped out all of a homes drapes and blinds because the owner was gone overnight.

But I digress.

The Frightener would not work for dogs because when you want to stop a dog from doing wrong things, you can train them either with reward or punishment. This is for three reasons: You want them to respect and obey you so a loud can from the Dog Gods is impersonal - they need to see that You Are Personally Unhappy. A dog would likely be curious about the can and not run so far, killing off the startle value after the first few uses. Finally, dogs are clearly not as stupid as cats and would likely try to retrieve the Evil Can to bring to you as a fetch toy.

If I ever get up the gumption to actually make the Frightener, I'll let you all know if it works. I think it will.