OK, this was inspired by Chip's previous post. Note the very first line and bear in mind that the song is now over 35 years old! The DK's are a special--they managed to piss-off both right-wingers and left-wingers. Band leader Jello Biafra (née Eric Boucher) took on Tipper Gore in the 1990's link, back when Tipper Gore represented the "religious right."
Brother James said, "I don't know. We might not not even have a garden this year." That's unthinkable and there he is thinking it. I had instant pity, and deep pity too, for his wife, new to the country, straight to California, a rather big dream come true and unfold before her in series of amazements and BAM no garden. Oh no. The humanity.
"How about hydroponic tomatoes like your Aerogarden except 5 gallon buckets that are tiered."
"How does the water flow to the buckets?"
"Gravity."
I see on right-leaning blogs comments to articles addressing Jerry Brown and California and earlier chances they had back then in the 70's when population was less that go along the lines of, "All this for minnow," or, "Meanwhile hundreds of billions of gallons of water flushed into the Pacific to protect the Delta Smelt," and the comments rise to the top there in comments and separated out for admiration for their top commenting summation.
That's a lot of water when people are hurting for water.
But why? Why would the state do this to save the fish? What is it about these fish? What are they anyway? And why all the fuss about concentrations of people and farms and industry?
Turns out to be Silvery Minnows in one area of controversy and Delta Smelt in another. The minnows are not baby fish, that is just their name because they are small like bait fish, they are adult fish that are small but not so small as neon tetras. Both are plain. If you drew a simple cartoon fish with the basics, these would be it. One is a little more like a pencil than the other. They're both the size of a finger.
I thought, "This is a challenge for aquarium hobbyists. Save the fish!"
No challenge is too great for aquarium hobbyists, any river or lake situation can be replicated with technical precision and artistic éclat. The fish are not much to look at, but there is cache in being environmentally-minded, "oh those are endangered species," the sacrifices we make and all that, but if they would shoal together in river-like conditions, or collect among native river plants in or out out of a current, they might be fun to observe. I notice fish do that when frightened, clump together like that, so scare them a little. Reading along through various stories about these endangered species and water disputes, one of the articles mentioned that California is already doing all this aquarium breeding with some 50,000 or some fish in re-establishment programs statewide. It is not a matter of the number of fish being low.
Maybe it was 500,000. It was a lot of little fish.
It is a matter of their entire environment threatened. The fish are the canaries in the coal mine so to speak, indicating the entire environment is out of whack be the cause population stress, or farming or industry, things are seriously wrong and a million caged canaries or aquarium fish will not fix that imbalance.
And James you did move there to be part of all that is happening in California, so suck it, your wife knew worse hardships than relief from gardening, so let's look at some schemes for hydroponic tomatoes. This could be fun.
Two hundred eighty pounds of tomatoes! Shut up! I went back and forth from Tony's and home all summer long filling my backpack with tomatoes and peaches, passing them around, and I didn't come close to two hundred eighty pounds. That is a ringing success. He sounded so sad, and yet happy too for the success then back to sad for it ending this way with blight then back to happy to have done it, and pleased to try again and admitting the whole thing is fun. And that is the whole point because you buy heirloom tomatoes all season long for half the expense, depending on crop and setup, and none of the trouble.
I couldn't find the earlier video I saw of the guy with the 5 gallon buckets. Built as stadium bleachers the water is pumped to the top, maybe distributed up there, each bucket fills by charged water pumped directly over the roots of the top tier plants. It drains over them into the bucket. The bucket fills to a point then drains to the plant in the next bucket down directly over its roots, filling its bucket to a point. Water remains in the bottom of the buckets so the whole inside of the bucket stays fogged and the roots hanging in there always wet and always refreshed and recharged. All tiers are watered this way and and pump shuts off for awhile and starts up again in preprogramed sequence.
Now on YouTube all the videos are people showing off their gigantic hydroponic tomatoes. Each year new videos are added and now they only mention the type of their system. The rest is all tomato parade and that is not helpful. Except this guy. I almost made a cartoon of him in Rube Goldberg style.
He's bombed.
And then the camera turns back on the fish in their fiberglass storage containers to the fish that do not see the light of day and you realize the fish spend their whole lives in there like a prison. And my tank is a prison too but at least my tank has a chance of faking them out.
Remember the fundraiser Chip posted about earlier, its over 3/4 of a million dollars by the way. And it's got some people really ticked off. Among them, an Alix Bryan, who works for a local news station says she "reported" (to the authorities?) the fund for fraud "just in case". (see tweet above)
"Just in case", isn't that the crux of the Memories Pizza witch-hunt. Nothing like what the Social Justice Warriors are claiming the RFRA law will do has even happened yet. But they are out to intimidate and disrupt peoples livelihood, on the slim chance someone may discriminate, "just in case".
Public accommodation for me, but not for thee. It's a two way street in this country and thank the lord for that this good Friday. and thanks for reading this rant.
I worked at a small convenience store in the early 1990's. They had one of those fry delis that had chicken, jojos, corndogs, burritos etc. This particular night I had run out of burritos and chicken. I also shut the thing down and cleaned it all out about an hour before closing.
About 5 minutes before I was closing up a guy walked in and asked for some burritos. I told him I was out of them, and that I was just about to close and the fryer was shut down. He walked around the store for a minute (I assumed he was looking for something else to buy) and then he came up to the counter, pulled out a knife and told me if I didn't cook him some burritos he was going to stab me.
I freaked out, but told him I had none to cook. I showed him the freezer and told him I would happily cook anything he wanted from it, but he will see I was out of burritos. He looked in it for a minute, turned to me and said, "You really are out." I replied, "Yeah." He then put the knife away and left the store.
This occurred during a debate that became heated about the recent religious freedom bill that they liked before they decidedly didn't like it, and here let me mention this habit of keeping one's spouse guessing about what sets you off, keeping them always off balance and always on guard for your irrational explosions and incoherent demands, consistent only in its sanctimonious self-regard, is what abusive spouses do. They do this habitually before divorces and other tragic outcomes. It signals derangement. But that's a given, as theses types by gravity have collected themselves into a political party and this is a political item. "Help, I'm pooled here and I can't get out." This sort of thing comes out of a crack addict's mouth. Here is Vanessa Summers:
“I love his little son, but he’s scared of me because of my color — and that’s horrible.”
Yes, that is horrible. You're actually as state representative. Say you're sorry right now. Oh, that's right, you're deranged, and Democrat, and office holder, and social justice warrior, and minority and all that means never having to say you're sorry.
The story says people gasped and groaned.
“It’s true. And that’s something we are going to work on. I asked him please, ‘Introduce your child to some people of color so he won’t live his life as a prejudice person.’ I would like for you all to not vote for this bill.”
And he said, "Fuck you, racist." Psych! He said no such thing.
Kids do that. Man, I have a photograph that's really embarrassing. Somebody has it. It's been in the battleship gray painted box forever. One of my sibs has it. We're all lined up on the sofa but Jimmy is not yet born, so four of us in a row two boys and two girls in a row, by age, by size, dressed like little white kids. Like four little overly groomed dolls lined up.
Mum hired a photographer to send photographs of us to Dad. He was missing a critical point in all of our development. She wanted to show him what we look like. We are dressed up, hair combed, groomed like Easter or going to church.. Barry is all, "Who are you? Why are you here? Is that your camera? Does it take color? Where did you come from? How did you get here? Do you have your own car? Did you take a taxi? Did you ride a bus Is your camera expensive? Can I see through it? How do you know mum?" He's only five years old and he's full of questions totally engaged with the new character who suddenly appeared in our home, I'm next to him dressed as his twin in our white yacht pennate shirts, short pants and white leather children's shoes with my head leaned over comically on his shoulder sucking his energy like a goddamn little energy-vampire. I remember that moment decades ago even though I was four because it was so strange having a GIANT FUCKING MONSTER MAN INVADING OUR HOUSE.
He was a white guy. And I was four. Imagine how I would have reacted at less than half that age and that scary bitch came up on me. Yeah, you'd have to work on training having the kid around big scary racist representatives. But then I was a strange little kid and the embarrassing photo really does pretty much prove it.
The article says,
Most parents of young children will immediately recognize the behavior of McMillan’s young son as simple shyness, typical of that age, and usually overcome with time.
McMillan said his toddler “reacted the same way he reacts with anybody brand new, he buries his head in his dad’s shoulder. Whoever it is, it’s what he does. He’s an 18-month-old kid; he’s in a new environment up here in the place like the Statehouse but doesn’t know anybody. I honestly don’t remember anything out of the ordinary.”
Really? It wasn't just me? Well, now I don't feel so bad. Odd, parents will recognize behavior in their children but not recall it in their earlier selves nor see it in embarrassing old photos of themselves. They need children to remind them they did the same thing. Dollars to doughnuts white and black people alike scared the piss out of miniature two-year old future representative Vanessa Summers. Few are so precarious as brother Barry that day whose energy I drew off. Has she no children? Has her inner child died?
The preliminary agreement allows all sides -- the U.S., Iran and five other world powers -- to continue working toward a final agreement by a June 30 deadline.
"It is a good deal," Obama said.
At the outset of his show today, Rush was pointing out how far the left has traveled (my word) following Obama. The left that was adamantly anti-nukes, before and during the Reagan years, is now, in the personification of the United States president, about to welcome another country into the nuclear club.
Lerner, unsurprisingly, was pleased by the announcement. “Anyone who takes a serious and impartial look at this issue would conclude that Ms. Lerner did not waive her Fifth Amendment rights,” said Lerner’s attorney, William Taylor III, in a statement. “It is unfortunate that the majority party in the House put politics before a citizen’s constitutional rights.”
“Ms. Lerner is pleased to have this matter resolved and looks forward to moving on with her life,” Taylor added.
Republicans were disappointed by the decision not to move ahead.
“Once again, the Obama administration has tried to sweep IRS targeting of taxpayers for their political beliefs under the rug,” said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel, urging the White House to “do the right thing and appoint a special counsel to examine the IRS’ actions.”
If you, Memory Pizza, decide to re-open rather than just take the gofundme money and enjoy a nice retirement or at least a nice relaxed time for awhile, then I bet $100.00 I can improve your pizza in two easy steps and three more less easy steps improvement beyond that. You can just go ahead and use these ideas and I'll trust your Christian ethics about them improving your pizza immediately. I know they will.
1) Dough aging. Whatever it is you are doing aging your dough at least overnight will improve it noticeably, and in a contest with all other things equal, your aged dough will win. It makes regular dough into country dough. It adds character. It begins fermentation as there is enough time to incorporate cell generations and cell death. The yeast cells begin to consume the dough, but slowly. They actually begin to mess their own quarters and that translates to flavorful bread with character. Two or three days fermentation and the effect is more pronounced and the dough takes on characteristics of sourdough. That improves the flavor greatly but also alters the texture negatively. The more like sourdough then the more like cardboard when baked into pizza because more is consumed by the organisms. In that case then, mix fermented old and worn out dough with brand new fresh dough for spectacular pizza dough with the best properties of both.
2) Dough composition. 20% semolina flour with 80% high protein (bread) flour. Bread flour becomes stringy with just a few turns. It's the sturdy stuff that bagels are made of. Semolina is larger granules without the husks almost like cornmeal except wheat. The wheat is cracked open and smashed to tiny diameter but not pulverized to dust as flour. It's yellow.
Those two things right there will win the bet.
3) Oven and baking surface, preferably stone, should be hot as can be. Wood fire oven best of all but usually not practical. Hot as your oven will go. Experiments were conducted by a team of cooking geeks for the book Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, Good Food where the lock was disabled on a self-cleaning oven to get the temperature high as possible. They also found that an upside down cast iron pan works very well for pizza baking surface but limits the size to individual pizzas.
You don't need an official pizza-peel to slide the prepared pizza onto the dangerously hot stone, a cookie sheet works as well as a peel. You can get the pizza to slide with cornmeal ball bearings or semolina flour ball bearings, or else parchment paper, just let the paper toast between stone and pizza then use the paper to help retrieve the cooked pizza.
4) For really top end pizza, buffalo mozzarella and maybe this isn't a great idea for a small town shop due to expense, on the other hand, why shortchange yourself? So, certainly for your own personal pizza, try it at least once. This is the mozzarella that pizza is made for. It kicks up the effort to a whole new level.
5) Fresh herbs. The whole idea is brilliantly toasted bread with olive oil and fresh herbs. Everything else is extra, like sauce and protein and cheese, that brings pizza from focaccia closer to toasted sandwiches like croque Monsieur or tortilla piled with these similar elements and either roasted or toasted. Fresh herbs are important for their breathy element.
Notice I didn't mention real garlic nor authentic tomato sauce. They're important but they don't affect every pizza and they don't guarantee you win. Some pizza won't have them. But all pizza will be improved with my suggestions. So just go ahead and give me $100.00 because I already know all this wins.
O’Connor said he’s never been asked to cater a wedding, and that the response was hypothetical in response to questions posed by the news crew.
“It’s hard to speak when things get taken so out of context and this thing goes sky high and just blows everything up,” he said. “I’ve got a family to think about, too.”
In an unmarked car, the policeman was allegedly attempting to park without using his blinker at a green light. (His reverse lights weren't on. Likely double parked without hazards on.) The Uber driver pulled around and gestured that he should use his blinker, casually and non-offensively, and kept driving us. The policeman quickly pulls up behind us and this is what happens.
fourth month, c.1300, aueril, from Old French avril (11c.), from Latin (mensis) Aprilis, second month of the ancient Roman calendar, of uncertain origin, perhaps based on Apru, an Etruscan borrowing of Greek Aphrodite. Or perhaps *ap(e)rilis "the following, the next," from its place as the second month of the old Roman calendar, from Proto-Italic *ap(e)ro-, from PIE *apo- "away, off" (see apo-; compare Sanskrit aparah "second," Gothic afar "after"). With month-name suffix -ilis as in Quintilis, Sextilis (the old names of July and August). In English in Latin form from mid-12c. Replaced Old English Eastermonað, which was named for a fertility goddess (see Easter). Re-spelled in Middle English on Latin model (apprile first attested late 14c.).
I learned two things: First, that that online dictionary surpasses my dead tree OED of Etymology which only recites the "fourth month of the year" part and a couple of Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish cognates. Second, I learned the Latin words Quintilis and Sextilis for July and August -- those dead words make sense in view of September and October. Damn those Romans and their renaming of months after Caesars! Of course, September is our ninth month and the Roman's seventh month. The two-month shift makes sense if March is the first month of the year.
For the heathen Anglo-Saxons, April corresponded with the lunar month of Eostermonað. Bede writes that this month was named after a goddess Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated at this time. He goes on to say that "Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance". 'Paschal' is an archaic English form of the Hebrew word, pesah, meaning 'Passover'. Most European languages still use a form of this word to mean Easter (e.g. French Pâques, Danish Paaske, Scottish Gaelic Cáisg). In contrast, the modern German word for Easter is Ostern, from the Old High German Ostara.* In Teutonic Mythology, Jacob Grimm writes that "This Ostara, like the Anglo-Saxon Eastre, must in the heathen religion have denoted a higher being, whose worship was so firmly rooted, that the Christian teachers tolerated the name and applied it to one of their own grandest anniversaries." Eostra/Ostara may have started out as a local goddess who travelled to Britain from what is now Germany with a particular tribe, or a group of tribes such as the Saxons.
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*My German language Duden 7 gives a lovely history of the word Ostern, tying it to together with Easter, east, Austria, and Australia.
