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According to a CBS news poll, Bush’s approval rating has fallen to just 34 percent, an all-time low. This is not really shocking considering the myriad scandals and evidences of near total incompetence and cronyism that have emerged from the Bush White House. ~
M-O-M-O-R-M-O-R-N-I-N-G-W-O-O-D. The song “Nth Degree” has to be–along with “I Am A Tree” and “First It Giveth”–one of the best driving anthems of the last 20 years. The question is not “what does this song have going for it”, but rather what doesn’t it? And I love songs where you get to shout along the band’s name.
In the spirit of change and forward momentum, I’m going to undertake to clean up a very old mess tomorrow afternoon. There’s only one reader who really knows what I mean by this, but I wanted to say it here anyway. That reader has been a source of support, know it or not and deserves my thanks and more.
It’s not everyday that we get a chance to undo rash decisions from our past. Here’s to actually taking opportunities to set things right when they present themselves, whether it’s by taking a phone call in your office after hours just before your birthday or by thumbing through a college coursebook. Thanks, you know who you are.
I’ve just discovered Regina Spektor. And I’m kinda blown away a little bit. The song “Ghost Of Corporate Future” is great.~
An aggregator for MP3 blogs. You can Podcast the whole site as well. I’ve been gaining an interest in these things lately, perhaps spurred on by this “Thursday tunes” silliness I do every week now. ~
Blackboxvoting.org just published its findings on voting irregularities in Palm Beach in 2004. It’s just as bad as you thought, maybe worse. ~
Thursday Tunes!
Paradise Vending - Farm To Market
Mogwai - Folk Death 95
I got an email today asking me to send along a recipe to the sender, add a friend to the email and pass it on. It’s sort of a chain I guess, but since it didn’t involve urban legends or Nigerian banking scams I said what the heck. Here’s what I sent along.
littlerobothead’s nowhere-in-particular style pork shoulder
- 1 large pork shoulder, dashed with salt and pepper and garden variety sodium-based tenderizer
- 1 onion, minced finely
- 1 tsp of real, honest to goodness butter
- 3 cups ketchup (I know, I know…)
- 1 cup apple cider vinegar (+/-)
- 3 tbsp brown sugar
- 1 tsp ground black pepper
- 1 tbsp molasses
- 1 tsp ground cumin (or to taste)
- a few passes with the nutmeg and a fine grater
- optionally, some Texas Pete or whatever hot sauce you can get regionally
Prep:
In a medium saucepan heat butter to bubbling and add onion, sauteeing until transparent. Add ketchup, vinegar and sugar. You may need to play around to get the tanginess where you want it. I usually do depending on who’s eating. Add the remaining sauce ingredients and simmer until the edges of the body in the pan turn a deep red–almost brown. Remove from heat and cover.
Now this is important: since most people don’t have a smokehouse handy the only real way to slow cook will be in the oven. Home ovens are great because you don’t have to add wood to them and watch them all the way through the 12 hour cooking process. However, they excel at drying meat out fast. To keep it from happening you need to sear any meat you plan on cooking in your oven or broiler for more than 10 minutes. For an entire shoulder you may need to get creative about finding a pan that large. Once you do, heat it with a smidge of butter inside until the butter is bubbling and getting just this side of brown. Then put the shoulder in and sear on all sides for two minutes per side. RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO MUCK ABOUT WITH THE MEAT. You’re going to want to make sure it isn’t sticking, and poke at it and all that and I’m here to tell you: it’s going to stick a little, get over it. You’ll thank yourself when you pull the shoulder out of the oven and you can pull the bone out in one piece with no effort. Just sear it. Walk away if you have to. (Jeez, OCD much?)
So now your meat is seared and it needs to go into a large casserole, preferably metal. Put it into your preheated oven (you were preheating right?) @ 325º for about 10 minutes UNCOVERED. Now here’s another critical trick: when the first 10 minutes are up a) open the oven, b) baste the meat for the first time with the sauce, c) cover it with foil, d) walk away for the first 40 minutes and do nothing. The trick here is to give the meat as much time alone as possible. Baste once every forty minutes or so, and maybe even pour some of the sauce into the bottom of the pan. You need to keep the moisture in at all costs. Here’s another trick: cover the meat, not the pan. Get the foil close as close to the meat as possible. If you’re worried about stickage spray the dull side of the foil with canola spray. Cover what you’re cooking, not what you’re cooking in.
The meat will need to cook about six hours. Sorry kids, that’s just the way it goes. It may need to cook for less time than that depending on the age of your oven and how good a job you’ve done with the foil. Basically, what we’re looking for is meat that “threads” when you pull at it with a fork. We want distinct, 1/4 inch threads and no resistance on the fork. It sounds tough, but it’s so easy. What people forget about cooking meat in the oven is that it’s all about leaving it alone and making sure it has enough water, sort of like a pit bull.
Clearly, my BBQ sauce is sort of a bastardized version of several regional varieties. Eastern Carolina barbecue doesn’t really appeal to me all that much, since it’s really just shoulder soaked in vinegar. Not much trick to that is there? KC style gets closer to my taste, but I do like the long deliberate cooking time in Carolina style. I haven’t had any true Delta/Memphis style ‘cue, so I can’t comment.
As for the ketchup, you can make your sauce without it by mixing equal parts tomate paste and corn syrup with a splash of water and adding it to the dry ingredients and onion. But where I come from tomate paste and corn syrup with a splash of water is called ketchup…
Enjoy! ~
Why doesn’t video on Yahoo work at all? I’ve been trying on and off in every iteration of their offering to get it to work–with lots of browsers and at least three platforms–to no avail. Having said that I cannot see how it gets used very often and in turn how it could possibly be a significant stream of revenue for them. Why not open it up a little, or make it work at least as well as their competitors? Of course I’m ignoring all the obvious Draconian add-ons that are required by copyright holders these days. I’m certain is takes time to disable and hobble all that video, before watering it down content-wise so as not to make it truly compelling. But even so. There’s got to be some easy way to let me see my 42 second clip of last night’s American Idol winners without eight browser crashes, five errors and eleven stalled progress indicators, right? ~
Recently I was in line at some coffee place waiting for a latte. I pricked my ears up at the background music only to realize it was “I Would Die 4 U”, the Prince classic, playing into the staid and indifferent ears of the customers in this indifferent and unremarkable place. And it got me to thinking.
Prince is a bad ass.
I remember seeing the video for “1999″ on a then neonate MTV. At the ripe old age of five or so I obviously had no idea what I was looking at: A keyboard player dressed as an ER doc? Two gorgeous women playing yet another keyboard (and sort of playing each other, if you get me)? A backup guitar player trying really hard to look like Jimi Hendrix? We’re hitting all the high points of rock history in one three minute clip here, people. On top of all that everyone is moving in unison, like a sort of sparkly, purple version of the Four Tops with prominently featured and musically gifted lesbians. I mean, the guy’s band was called The Revolution. Are you kidding me?
At the height of his powers Prince could not be stopped. He could breath hard and put the first three rows on its knees, and he brought rock and roll back to the black kids and brought funk back to the white kids. He got Grammy nods and scored Hollywood blockbusters. Then all that nastiness with Warner Brothers happened and Prince changed his name to something we couldn’t readily pronounce. Which was a real shame. I think Prince had another “Purple Rain” in him somewhere (or at least another “Darling Nikki”), even though he’s done reasonably well since the (now undone) name change.
So Prince, even though your former glory is sort of a memory, I can always watch that video for “1999″ and remember what could have been. We’ll always have Minneapolis.
Follow the Crooked Road : A tour of the some of the birthplaces of bluegrass, in the southern counties of Virginia. No matter how far you get from the south, as a southerner you can never completely despise bluegrass. There’s something about those harmonies and the virtuosity that will always appeal at least to me. ~
Paul Ford calmly and thoughtfully reminds us of stuff that we’ve forgotten, and helps us to look at the world in ways that we might not otherwise.~
If you’re a beta tester and you’d like to see some of the changes that I’ve made to Longing hit me up and I’ll send you a link. If you’re not a beta tester, have at it. ~
The most popular essay in the history of Atlantic Monthly’s online presence. There’s a lot of good information here regarding introverts, of whose number I suppose I am.
With their endless appetite for talk and attention, extroverts also dominate social life, so they tend to set expectations. In our extrovertist society, being outgoing is considered normal and therefore desirable, a mark of happiness, confidence, leadership. Extroverts are seen as bighearted, vibrant, warm, empathic. “People person” is a compliment. Introverts are described with words like “guarded,” “loner,” “reserved,” “taciturn,” “self-contained,” “private”—narrow, ungenerous words, words that suggest emotional parsimony and smallness of personality. Female introverts, I suspect, must suffer especially. In certain circles, particularly in the Midwest, a man can still sometimes get away with being what they used to call a strong and silent type; introverted women, lacking that alternative, are even more likely than men to be perceived as timid, withdrawn, haughty.
Perhaps a bit politicized (I don’t feel like the extroverts are out to get me like he does) but nonetheless a good read about what it’s like to be something other than what you hear about all the time. ~
Mr. Jalopy purchased a jar of random kid-treasures for a $1 at a garage sale. He’s taken a photo of each item and placed them up on Flickr. (via Mr. Jalopy and BoingBoing) ~
Jake takes great photos. Here’s even more proof. Even Streetsy isn’t so bad when he’s behind the lens. ~
Thursday tunes! Almost too late!
Yo La Tengo - Don’t Have To Be So Sad
the busby berkeleys - the arms of a hundred oil derricks (demo)
Laura Veirs - Bedroom Eyes
Enjoy! ~
Somewhere in the odyssey of the last six months I started to compile this list of places to move when I’d had enough of here. Lead amongst the pack was Chicago, which felt more like home to me than anywhere I’d been in a long time. Something about the lake, the food, the friendliness of the people, the arts, and the close proximity to both the prairies and the Cubs made for a perfect match. Then I spent most of the winter traveling to various places in the midwest, until I’d been to ten states in a matter of weeks. I’m beginning to see where I live as something totally different than I used to.
It seems to me now that I need to be somewhere that will compliment–and not shape–me. In other words, I want to co-exist with my chosen city rather than constantly find myself reacting to it. And then there’s the need to be able to ask for soy milk in my coffee and not feel like a dork. And DC never made me feel like a dork for wanting soy milk. ~
How long until my Mac can do this? Awesome touch haptic interfaces. ~
Whoever is tracking their stats using a beta of Measure Map: I am so jealous. I’m using StatCounter now and while it’s nice it can’t match the apparent sweetness of MM. Another one I’m coveting right now (and with good reason) is Mint. Hell, anything Shaun designs is bound to be good. ~
For the second day in a row I’ve left my cellphone at home. I had sort of a busy morning since I’m going to spend most of the day in meetings. That means I put almost as much into my morning ritual as I would on nights reserved for dates with my lady, because no one hates stinky worse than your lady or your local venture capitalist. So I’m trapped without a phone today, and no plausible escapes when I get those lovely calls from the road that help to meter out my day and make it a bit more bearable. Grumble. ~
Blog what you love. Some good points from Derek for all of us low-rung bloggers.~
These are three of my favorite images on the entire internet, and have been for years. I’d forgotten all about these for a long time until I found them in my Safari bookmarks. I always hope that couple is still together. (via digifox) ~
Yahoo! has released an open source user interface library for use in building web applications. Lots of nice Ajax toys, as well as some good animation classes. There are so many of these out now, but it’s nice to have one that’s so well documented. ~
