montrealfood blog

Something to Make Neil Armstrong Roll Over in His Sleep

2012-01-31T07:40:00.000-08:00

IN THE EVENT OF MOON DISASTER (by William Safire, speechwriter for President Nixon, July 1969):

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow and surely find their way home. Man's search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

PRIOR TO THE PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT: The president should telephone each of the widows-to-be.

AFTER THE PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT, at the point when NASA ends communications with the men: A clergyman should adopt the same procedure as a burial at sea, commending their souls to "the deepest of the deep," concluding with the Lord's Prayer.

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Can you imagine being marooned on the moon, left there to die a ghastly death when your oxygen ran out? While the entire world watched helplessly? I'd warrant there was at least a 50/50 chance just that was going to happen. Sleep well, Neil and Buzz, sleep well. Jay Leno will still be here tomorrow and so will you.

Red Alert: Space Junk Too Large to Ignore

2012-01-30T17:33:00.000-08:00

I don't know if you've been reading the astrophysics journals lately, like I have (Hell, I have properties on Jupiter and Pluto -- of course I read 'em all!) but if you have, you'll have noticed that there's a fair bit of alarm going among astronomical circles about all that space junk floating around, practically right above our heads in near-Earth orbit. This means pieces of titanium over one centimeter square, hurtling at over 25,000 miles per hour, easily enough to dent an astronaut's suit who's floating around in an EVA (Extra-vehicular-activity) -- which as you can imagine, could be catastrophic. Imagine your whole body being sucked through of a hole the size of a dime! Of course, you'd be instantly frozen into a 50-foot long extra-thick linguine.

But apparently there's a new threat: there's something orbiting the Earth that's much, much larger than a small piece of titanium that scientists have been aware of for a while now, but in recent years have apparently forgotten about. That would be the International Space Station.

International Space Station (ISS)

Apparently, forgetting about it doesn't mean it's no longer there! Yes, even the roving bands of homeless astronauts who haunt what remains of Cape Canaveral still remember -- and now fear -- this huge, $96 billion, 4,780-tonne behemoth still circling our skies in an ever-increasingly-descending orbit.

It's estimated that this thing will first be brushing the outer edges of our atmosphere on April 12 of this very year. The scientists don't know exactly where it will land, but they have said that it has enough fuel in one of its tanks to actually direct it towards a spot -- any spot that we desire. Apparently we have the following choices:

a) George W. Bush's house in Lubbock, Texas

b) George W. Bush's mother's house in Gainseville, Alabama

c) George W. Bush's brother Jeb's car, somewhere on the road between Altoona, Pennsylvania and Lubbock, Texas

and

d) George W. Bush's dog, Saddam's kennel.

Apparently all it will take is a small PayPal donation payable to me, to make this happen. Email me for further instructions!

One for Knattie

2012-01-29T13:06:00.000-08:00

Take this, Knattie:

Lulu thinks we'll never let her back in off the balcony

"Waaaaah!"

Duck à la ChefNick

2012-01-29T12:22:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was in full-on urge for duck. I'm a duck-and-potatoes man . . . other than duck burgers I really haven't explored this delicious bird. If you have never eaten duck or are afraid to try it for any reason, take it from a picky eater: a good duck breast cooked correctly tastes like a very good filet mignon. The texture is slightly different and it does have a certain taste that is not beef, but both are actually improvements on filet mignon.

It most definitely, however, does NOT taste like chicken.

Here is a very safe and almost foolproof way to make duck.

Duck breast

Ingredients
1 duck breast, as large as you can find
Brine: kosher salt, brown sugar, orange juice
Cracked black pepper, salt to taste

Method
Day before or morning before: prepare brine by dissolving 1/2 cup of kosher salt, 1/4 cup of brown sugar in water. Add about 2 cups of orange juice. Add enough of this mixture to just cover the duck and brine, either in a large ziploc bag or a plastic container, in the refrigerator.

Duck breast in brine

To prepare: remove the duck breast from the brine. Score the fat which should be on one side of the breast in a criss-cross pattern, taking care to cut just deep enough to go through the fat but not penetrate the duck.

Sprinkle non-fat side with salt and pepper. Preheat a cast iron pan on medium heat for about four minutes or until just visibly smoking. Put the duck breast in the pan, fat side down. Don't move the breast around. Just let it sit for about 4-5 minutes; after this time there will be quite a copious quantity of rendered duck fat in the pan. Hold the duck with tongs and pour off the fat. return to the heat another 2-3 minutes.

Flip the duck and sauté for 6-10 minutes, depending on the thickness of the breast (about one inch including fat layer is normal). Cover the pan with aluminum foil and place in a 200-degree oven until you're ready to serve.

To serve, on cutting board, carefully remove the fat layer with a very sharp knife. Slice the breast across the grain into 1/4-inch-thick slices. The duck should be rare; red in the middle radiating to pink at the edges. If you or someone else prefers medium rare (anything more cooked than this is not recommended) just put the slices that you want done back in the pan, which should still be hot. If it isn't, heat on medium until it's cooked to the desired doneness.

Serve immediately with accompanying sauce and whatever side dish you have prepared.

Duck with haricots fin, pommes de terre Dauphinoise and mushroom sauce

Nick's Mushroom Sauce for Duck

Ingredients
4 C shiitake and pleurot mushrooms, sliced (any mushrooms are fine)
3/4 cup finely chopped shallots
3-4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 C white or rosé wine
1 C chicken broth
1 C demiglace sauce (commercial is fine, or perhaps you can get some from your butcher. There is no substitute).
1/2 C Italian or flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
2 T butter
Truffle oil or olive oil
Crème fraîche (optional)

Ingredients for mushroom sauce

Method
In a sauté or sauce pan, sauté the mushrooms in oil on medium heat until cooked and browned. Set aside. In the same pan, sauté the shallots on medium for about ten minutes, or until thoroughly cooked. Add the garlic and cook another three minutes or so. Set aside, but not with the mushrooms.

In the same pan, reduce the wine on medium heat until halved in volume, about ten minutes. Add the chicken broth and reduce uncovered for another ten minutes. Add the demiglace sauce and cook for another five minutes. Add back the shallot-garlic mixture and bring to a simmer. Pour the sauce mixture into a large container (I use a 4-cup glass measuring cup) and hand-blend the sauce until smooth, using a hand blender (alternatively, pour into a blender or a food processor and blend until smooth).

Pour the sauce back into the sauce pan and bring to gentle simmer. Add the mushrooms. Add butter and whisk until thoroughly combined. Add 1/2 cup or so of crème fraîche, if desired, and blend thoroughly. Add parsley and cracked black pepper to taste. Serve.

Canadians First!

2012-01-29T07:41:00.000-08:00

It's official: a Canadian Lego-man was the first Lego-man into space.

Now I want to start a space tourism company for toys. I have a lineup of 13 action figures waiting to go into space!

Some of the boys at a pre-flight press conference

Those Brits. They Crack Me Up.

2012-01-27T16:55:00.000-08:00

Considering I was one of them for six miserable years of my life. But when you read this piece, you wonder if they indeed share the same language as us, and who, exactly, is speaking English here?

Her article is almost complete gibberish. It's like drunken texting, but worse -- like autistic drunken texting, with apologies to all Savants.

God save the Queen, indeed.

Farewell, Fair Grape

2012-01-27T16:42:00.000-08:00

I'm giving up alcohol on Wednesday. That being the first of February. I don't know how long that will be for, but it will be for at least the foreseeable future. Why? Because I want to. That should be the *only* reason anyone gives up anything, unless doctors tell you you have months to live if you don't.

No, I'm just giving it up to give it up. No one's pressuring me. It's not causing me any particular grief at the moment. I just don't feel like drinking any more. Maybe for a year. Maybe for ten years. Maybe forever. Maybe till next week -- but I don't think so. Once I decide to do something, completely unilaterally, which is the way it always has to be with me, with a total absence of pressure from anywhere whatsoever, I just Do It.

Hey, want to join me? It might be fun for you too. It's never good to be a slave to anything. It'll be hard, sure, but I've had Hard. I quit a two-pack-a-day habit that had gone on for ten years, when I was all of 25 years old. No one pressured me to do it. I just decided it was time. It was hard, but not that hard. After that last cigarette, which I remember as if I smoked it one hour ago, I never smoked a cigarette again. Ever. That'll be 30 years next year.

Imagine. You can do whatever you want to do. It's all up to you.

Don't bother wishing me luck . . . it's not luck I'll need.

But fuck, I'm going to enjoy those strawberry daiquiris I made tonight. I'll kiss 'em goodbye for ya, how's that.

Goodbye, you fucker who ruled my life since I was 18 years old. Good bye, good bye, good bye!

I think I'll have a drink to that sentiment.

If anyone's interested in following me in my footsteps I've set up a page where we can all bitch and moan. You know where to reach me.

Easy Spicy Dill Pickles

2012-01-27T11:52:00.000-08:00

If you’re anything like me, you love dill pickles but the ones that come out of the grocery store are always too limp or too tame. Until I discovered this recipe, I too was resigned to this sorry state of affairs. I’d buy them, but the difference in taste from store-bought pickles to the pickles in this recipe is like Chef-Boy-ar-Dee to homemade spaghetti.

There will be those who are convinced that pickling is an arcane and potentially dangerous art (botulism!) and that mere home cooks shouldn’t attempt it, but nothing could be further from the truth. And the good thing about this recipe is that you don’t need any complicated equipment (just a couple of Mason jars) and you don’t need a pressure canner or any of that nonsense that keeps people from making their own preserves.

This is a very simple recipe that will create fantastic, crunchy dill pickles within a week that will be devoured by friends and family (I made this for my family in California and the entire jar was gone in one day.) It looks complicated at first glance, but should only take you a small part of a lazy afternoon, with the results lasting for months.

I’ve made this recipe several times and have fiddled with it, adjusting vinegar and salt quantities, but in general, it should definitely provide you with a memorable pickle and you need know nothing about canning or preserving to do it.

Note first of all that the result cannot be put on a shelf in the kitchen; it has to be refrigerated. But who keeps dill pickles on the shelf anyway?

Okay, here we go:

You’ll need two Mason jars. These can be bought at any hardware store in the “Home” section. I recommend Bernardin. Mason jars consist of a glass jar with a wide mouth, a ring screw top and a central disc that fits in the ring to create a seal. If you can’t find these, use an empty jar of commercial spaghetti sauce (Prego etc.) that has been dishwashed with its top. Since we aren’t actually going through the whole boiling-water bath process, this should do fine, though it is definitely preferable to have the Mason jar with ring and sealer.

First, submerge one (or two, if you have the room) of the jars with their rings in a large pot and cover with hot water. Bring to a boil and continue on a rolling boil for ten minutes. This is to kill any possible bacteria lurking inside the jars (even though the pickles will be refrigerated, we don’t want to pack them in dirty jars.)

Sterilizing the Mason jar

Remove the jars and rings with tongs and set them upright on clean paper towels.

For the cucumbers, Kirby cucumbers are the best, although Mediterranean (or “Lebanese”) will do at a pinch. You definitely don’t want to use those behemoth cucumbers that we’re all used to seeing in the grocery store; they’ll turn to mush. They should be from 4 - 6 inches long, firm and green. About six fat ones should fill two jars once they’re cut. Prepare a large bowl with ice water, and after washing the cucumbers, submerge them in the ice water. This will make them crisper. This can be done hours ahead or even the day before.

Kirby cucumbers

Now you need to assemble your spices. These are all whole:

1T dill seeds
1T allspice
1T black peppercorns
3T yellow mustard seeds
3 dried chilies (optional or to taste; this amount will give the pickles a very slight burn, almost unnoticeable)

And you’ll need garlic cloves and fresh dill.

In a medium saucepan, mix 2 1/2 cups of white vinegar with 3 1/2 cups of water. Add 1/6 - 1/8 C kosher salt. Now add the spices. Bring to a boil and boil for three minutes. Remove from heat and let cool. This will take a couple of hours unless you put the pan in the refrigerator.

Boiling spices

Take the cucumbers and cut off both ends. I personally like dill spears (quartered lengthwise) but you can get creative; you could leave them whole (not recommended), cut them into chips (if you have a mandolin you could make ripple chips!) or cut them in half.

Quartered pickles

If you’re using garlic, peel approximately two large cloves per jar, halve them and crush them slightly with the blade of a knife so that they will release their flavor once in the jar. Cut a generous swath of fresh dill from the bunch and wash it.

Now put the pickles in the jars, interspersed with the fresh dill and garlic cloves.

Ready for the refrigerator

Fill the jars with the vinegar and spices, taking care to make sure that the chilies and various seeds get equally portioned to each jar. Leave about a half inch space between the vinegar and the lid, screw the lid on tight, and you’re done! Put the pickles in the refrigerator. They will be done in about a week and will last for at least three months. Incredibly crunchy (impossible with commercial product), they’ll definitely be the best spicy dill pickles you have ever had!

Bye Bye, Mr. Moon

2012-01-26T06:06:00.000-08:00

According to this, the moon is "spiralling away" from us at a rate of 28mm per year. Just imagine! In one billion years, the moon will be 17,398.3934 miles further away than it is now! Practically a pinpoint in the sky!

Tzanet is Still There

2012-01-26T03:59:00.000-08:00

Tzanet, the kitchen supply place opposite Marché Central on L'Acadie, is still there, I'm happy to report.

I don't know if I'm more like a pig in shit when I'm in an Apple store, an Asian grocery or a kitchen supply place, but Tzanet is one hell of a cool place to be in. What's great is that all the workers are extremely nice people and will go to the Ends of the Aisle to make sure you get that wooden salad bowl set you've been searching for.

It's chaotic, but some of the better aisles are those featuring these monster machines that look like they could take off your hand by just being plugged in -- some of them look very much like they're alive.

I got a great pepper mill, Brigitte got a mortar and pestle (good luck with that, honey pie -- I'll just make do with the spice grinder), we got some great teflon-ended tongs -- these are the stuff that only kitchen geeks could lust over.

They've been threatening that they're moving for over a year now, but they're still there, I'm very happy to report. But they didn't have that salad bowl set I want so much . . .

Typical Tzanet customer

Turn Off the Music; Watch the Video Full Screen

2012-01-23T06:11:00.001-08:00

Yosemite HD from Project Yosemite on Vimeo.

Meat Meets Vacuum; Results in Big Savings

2012-01-22T14:41:00.000-08:00

When I was in California over the holidays I found and bought possibly the most valuable kitchen tool anyone can have in their arsenal: a Foodsaver.

Foodsaver with filet

Yeah, I know, the filet looks gross, like a giant Alien baby, but consider the alternative: this untrimmed filet, which worked out to about ten pounds and, at $23.99/kg, cost me $89.09 untrimmed, versus the trimmed version, without a visible shred of fat on it, which was $41.99/kg.

I got fourteen 1.5"-thick steaks out of my filet, which works out to about $6.42 per steak (imagine how much each approximately 1/2-pound filet mignon would have cost at a decent steakhouse . . . maybe $30, minimum? So I saved about $330). If I'd bought the trimmed filet, each steak would have cost me about $11.75 . . . simply because some butcher removed about one pound of fat and trimmings. But that's still saving $20 or so off the cost of a steakhouse steak!

14 filet mignons ready for the freezer!

I also bought about ten pounds of chicken thighs, ten pounds of drumsticks, ten pounds of stew meat (for grinding later), ten pounds of top sirloin (for curry or boeuf Bourgignon) for about $20 each, and a HUGE Grana Padano, which I've Foodsavered nicely . . . won't have to buy meat for another 6 months all for around $200. That's $33/month!

It's very worth the cost of the Foodsaver ($110). Get one today!

(By the way, I'm selling my Foodsaver Professional II. If you identify yourself as being a reader of this blog I'll cut you an even better deal on it than it already is.)

Air Traffic Controller's Mistake

2012-01-21T11:10:00.000-08:00

Luc Ferrier, a junior air traffic controller at busy Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, France, inadvertently had all 150 radio channels open at peak evening rush hour when he told his next-door controller, Dominic Fortin, who was due for his coffee break, "You can take off now, if you like."

Geoffroi Masson, an avid planespotter, luckily had his camera out.

"You can take off now, if you like."

Music For Trees

2012-01-19T06:51:00.000-08:00

This is music played from a cross-section of a tree, mounted on a turntable and read by a Playstation head. I'm already coming up with some good lyrics for it. The first line to be "I'm singin' the Greens, baby . . ."

YEARS from Bartholomäus Traubeck on Vimeo.

You Are Not Reading This

2012-01-18T08:29:00.000-08:00

Consider this blog blacked out today in support of people against Hollywood and the music industry and the ridiculous censorship laws they're promoting. (To simplify this law for the cephalically-challenged, it goes thus: if a website posts a link to another website that has even one link to a copyright-violating file, then the first website is considered as guilty as the second, and the whole site can technically be ordered to shut down. Or so I understand it. Trust me, it would be bad.)

Just pretend you're not reading this and the whole page is blacked out (I'd do it if I knew how!)

It's amazing how long this bickering has been going on between the aforementioned Hollywood and music companies and the Internet. Ever since Napster closed its doors, oh, around 16 years ago?

Of course, back then there was no YouTube and practically no streaming video at all, so Hollywood at least kept its trap shut. But now they come bleating and whimpering like whipped puppies to Big Daddy to make the kids on the block stop laughing at them from across the street every time they go to school.

Clockwise from top left: Cary Sherman, Chairman & CEO, RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America); Mitch Glazier, Senior Executive Vice President, RIAA; Christopher J. Dodd, MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America); Jeff Bewkes, CEO, Time Warner; Howard Stringer, CEO, Sony Entertainment, Roger Faxon, CEO, EMI

Of course, if Hollywood stopped vomiting forth the endless stream of drivel they call "Motion Pictures," reduced the number of elephant-turd-slash-movies from 1,000 a year to just, say, TWO that are worth watching, and the music industry stopped churning out the buzzing drone of mindless noise they produce with such profligacy and instead give us three or four products that actually qualify for the term "music," both at reasonable prices, well, kids nowadays wouldn't feel so much the urge to borrow them only to discard them in disgust at a later date.

So please consider this page blacked out, oh, and fellow Canadians, don't sit there smugly thinking "Serves them Yanks right!" as, as we all know, Canada always follows the US, lapdog fashion no matter what they do.

Speaking of Action Figures

2012-01-17T05:06:00.000-08:00

I can't believe they've gone and done this. I would have so loved to have a Steve action figure. He would have been honoured.

"Just one more thing . . ."

Brad Joins the Boys! And a Brazen Plea for Donations . . .

2012-01-16T10:16:00.000-08:00

Yes, here he is in all his glory: Brad Pitt, inexplicably as a member of the French resistance. I don't know who does the R&D for toymaker DID (Dragon in Dreams) but I'd like to ask him why he made Brad as a French resistance fighter rather than the head of the Nazi kill squad in Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds.

Brad as he appears on my shelf!

Oh wait, I know -- it's because Hot Toys got there first. Damn. Now I have to get THAT one, but depending on where you look, it'll cost you as much as $250. I also want Hans Landa, but that will set me back another $150 or so . . . plus Tony Montana, and the Ralph Fiennes Nazi figure . . . the list is long, but my wallet is thin.

If you donate a small amount towards the purchase of one of these things, once I get enough to actually PURCHASE one, I'll send all donors a neatly packaged copy of this entire blog, complete with over twenty ChefNick recipes!

Anyone who donates over $50 will get a signed PHYSICAL copy of this entire blog! If you ask me, it's worth every dinar!

And You Thought HDR Photography Was Great

2012-01-14T07:21:00.001-08:00

You've seen my HDR experiments. Well, now there's HDR video (that would be High Dynamic Range, in which a subject is shot with two or more different exposures, which are then merged to give an other-worldly feeling). This video is awesome! Unfortunately it's beyond my ken at the moment, as I misplaced my beam splitter the other day. But gaze upon its awesomeness! (Shit, there I go again with the Awesome -- that's what three weeks in California do to you!)

HDR Video Demonstration Using Two Canon 5D mark II's from Soviet Montage on Vimeo.

Extortion Dot Com

2012-01-13T14:29:00.000-08:00

"From this Thursday 12 January, companies can apply to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for the domain name suffix of their choosing -- from dot brand (.brand) or dot product (.camera, for example) through to generic terms like .food, .hotel or .pugs. They have until 12 April to get their applications, along with the $185,000 fee, to ICANN. After that date it is expected that further applications won't be accepted for at least two or three years."

The absolute brazenness of ICANN (they're the guys to whom you have to go to get a domain name and its suffix, which, at the dawn of the Internet was limited to just three: dot com, dot net and dot org) is beyond words. That they can and will get away with it says reams about the powerlessness of any regulatory body to come in and, well, REGULATE these cyberthugs.

Basically, what this means is, sure, you can buy a domain name suffix of, say, .apple. So your collection of websites could all read like this: http://www.stevesplace.apple. But you will have to be a jillionaire. You will have to pay the $185,000 fee to apply, but in addition, there will be a yearly $100,000 charge for maintenance.

"Buying one of these domains is a big responsibility. The application form comprises of 53 questions and delivers around 200-300 pages of responses. You need to show that you have the financial stability to operate as a registry and if you are acting as an open registry on a generic term you need to show who you are going to market that term to," says some IT wonk about the Great Internet Shakedown.

So yes. Apple is of course going to snap up dot apple. But what the FUCK is the purpose? So it can have a page called "www.mac.apple"? HOW FUCKING LUDICROUS IS THAT? Dot xxx provoked a firestorm of criticism from the porn industry, and quite naturally. Now it'll be ultra-easy to just block any domain ending in xxx, although before, they could -- and did -- hide behind such innocent-sounding domains as www.whitehouse.com, which was originally a porn site and is now just a squathouse.

And Apple, like Samsung, General Motors, McDonald's and all the other big corporations will be FORCED to buy their own domain name suffixes, although I can't conceive of any cybersquatter with pockets deep enough to steal the name of a large corporation. But what about non-corporate names? Things like .icecream . . . is Ben and Jerry's going to have to fight it out with Häagen-Dazs and Dreyers for that one? Thereby adding $285,000 to ICANN's coffers for the purchase and a year of maintenance?

All I can think is that.com will now INCREASE in importance as the domain name pool gets further diluted and disorganized. And that's very, very good for me, who owns montrealfood.com, montrealsushi.com, montrealcurry.com, montrealvegetables.com, montrealfruit.com and several others. In fifty years the .com brand will STILL be THE top-level domain name suffix. ICANN can go take a very long, flying fuck. I'll warrant the outcry will be so loud that something will have to give in this ludicrous money grab.

Now, I'm taking donations for . . .

An idea whose time has come!

Autocidal Maniacs -- More News Than You Need Or Want

2012-01-13T10:10:00.000-08:00

I just read a sentence that was so obscene, so unbelievable, that I had to hurry over here to give you the news that you really don't want to know.

It's calculated that mosquitoes have killed OVER 50% of all the human beings who have EVER LIVED. That's 468 billion people, people.

If it killed that many people, how many animals has it murdered? The mosquito's existence is a very powerful proof that there is no God, if you ask me. It causes the most horrific diseases you can imagine. Have you ever see someone with malaria? I have. We had a good friend in Kinshasa, Zaire, Africa (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) who came down with it.

One day Manfred, for that's what his name was, came over to the house, and he looked weird. Shortly thereafter he was bowing to the porcelain god, teeth chattering incessantly as he sweated buckets; I can't remember what went on from there, but we were freaked out. We had no idea what was wrong with him.

We found out later, and I made it a point NEVER to forget to take that little pill my parents gave us weekly. (Apparently he died young, very young. Malaria never quite goes away.)

So how to get rid of this evil pest? As you well know, they develop all sorts of immunities to whatever we throw at them. When we hit them with DDT in the 50s everything was a grand success -- their numbers in Africa and elsewhere were halved, if not more, and children -- who were the largest portion of the population that succumbed to malaria -- began to actually grow up.

Then some self-serving bitch named Rachel Carson, a (typically) misguided environmentalist, sounded the alarm on DDT and freaked the public out (in the US, mind you, where malaria was almost non-existent) which led to the worldwide ban of DDT. The children began to die again. (Thanks, Rachel, for killing untold numbers of children so you could sleep more comfortably in your feather bed each night, knowing your Meyer strawberries were unsullied by any trace of DDT.)

It wasn't until the 90s that limited spraying of DDT -- namely on the insides of the walls of the housing in infested areas -- was reintroduced.

But the problem still remains, and the mosquito is not going away. Recently, however a new tactic is being tried: changing the genes of the female mosquito so that it gives birth to female larvae that can't fly. How cool is that? Scientifically pulling the wings off mosquitoes!

Since it's only the female that bites, the males go around happily mating with these altered females and only the males survive to fly. Theoretically this should kill off the entire population, since they can't develop a resistance to gene-splicing.

I honestly don't know how I've escaped any mosquito-borne diseases. I was born in India (Calcutta) and lived there until I was ten. I don't recall being given any anti-malaria pills. I lived in the Congo for three years in my early teens, and apparently the pills worked (though at some point or another I must have missed doses). I lived in Senegal for a year when I was 17 and took no pills. But I escaped. (That wasn't the only horrific disease I magically escaped -- there's a very nasty parasite named Bilharzia, which you really, really don't want to get -- but I happily sloshed around in the river Congo . . . and got away completely unscathed (oh, forgot Candiru! No wait, that's the Amazon!)

So hopefully a little autocide will go a long way. I for one will never miss that little chainsaw buzzing in my ear at three o'clock in the morning.

Is this the face that brought down 468 billion?

A Great Sell!

2012-01-12T22:35:00.000-08:00

I like hats. I was trolling eBay for a Borsalino hat. I do not want to pay $150 for a hat I wear once a year.

But I come across this auction for a Borsalino. Look at it. Read it. Read it carefully. It's one of the most bizarre eBay auctions I've ever come across. The guy who posted it is probably named Tattaglia and this hat is made by Corleone.

Alain Delon wears a Borsalino in "Borsalino"

Me 'an My Toyz

2012-01-12T22:03:00.000-08:00

I infuriate my wife. I can see why. I have a hobby that must just be absolutely infuriating to rational people without jobs.

I love action figures. Yes, I know you probably don't even know what an action figure is. Think G.I. Joe, except on 21st-century steroids.

I won't tell you who my latest acquisition is until I photograph him (you'll be amazed) but I'll tell you who I now want -- although he ranges in the $250 realm, way beyond my scope right now. But take a look. JUST TAKE A LONG GOOD LOOK.

Say chello to my li'l . . . TOY

The Trouble with Truffles

2012-01-09T13:30:00.000-08:00

Hmm . . . now that would have been a great Star Trek episode.

Truffles. Have you ever had one? Seen one? Smelled one? Tasted one? Well, until about five years ago, neither had I. The very thought of them -- being harvested from underground by pigs -- made my stomach churn.

Besides, they weren't exactly in the bin next to the button mushrooms at Metro. And I didn't frequent restaurants that served them. Even if I had, I wouldn't have paid the price for them.

But one day, at Jean-Talon market, I saw a bottle of huile des truffes -- truffle oil. It couldn't have been more than 100 ml. -- but it was $44! Insane, thought I, but I had a little extra cash that day so I bought the bottle.

I put it in the cupboard and forgot about it, until one night when I was doing filet mignons. I reached for the olive oil, getting ready to season the steaks, when there it was. I opened it and smelled it. And suddenly I knew that no one had been kidding. And why this bottle cost $44. And why I was going to put it on my jelly doughnuts, and peanut butter and pickle sandwiches, in my salsas, curries, dips, pizzas, my shampoo.

Yes, I had discovered truffles. Or had I?

Turns out the Truffle Story is more than a Trouble with Truffles episode of Star Trek. It's so complicated that I couldn't get a straight answer anywhere I looked.

I wondered how truffle oil was made. Some stories had it that the oil was put in a dark cold room, open to the air, below a large bag of truffles, and the truffle essence somehow "infused" itself into the oil. No, really. Even my culinary friend and expert Barry believed that. (I won't link to him because he'd be miffed.)

Then all sorts of stories started coming out -- most of them bad. I found out that my beloved oil, was, in all probability, a chemical. Or that it had Chinese truffles in it instead of French or Italian.

However, I can't give up on truffles. If they can make it taste like the oil I bought from the Oregon Truffle Oil company my wallet will continue to be light for a long time to come.

Make It Stop

2012-01-08T16:21:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know -- I know you're all saying: "What the fuck does it take to shut this guy up??" perhaps not so elegantly, but before I left you for the day I thought I'd just leave you with the worst movie ever made.

I think I commented somewhere that last year was a great year because while I was semi-trapped in my spider hole in California with no TV, I was able to go on YouTube, and it was really an eye-opener. You can waste literally years there now -- I was able to watch entire episodes of Columbo, in HD, no less -- and pretty much if you do the right looking, you'll be able to find pretty much anything you ever want to watch. (Side note: I actually watched a large part of Airport '75 last night, and if the point of this post, Battlefield Earth wasn't the worst movie ever made, Airport '75 certainly has got to be very, very close behind.

And before I watched Airport '75, I had the opportunity to watch a sci-fi film from 1953 on the "Silver Screen" channel and it was so truly, truly awful -- it made both Airport '75 and Battlefield Earth look like top ten movies of all time in comparison -- there were just no words.

I know I've been known to review restaurants, but reviewing movies has got to be the most wretched of careers that is possible to have -- up there with being an apprentice at the Big Cats section at Brooklyn Zoo.

Shovelling mostly shit is what it comes down to -- there just isn't a better term. Reviewing gay porn movies must be the bottom of a deep barrel but sitting through these things for hours at a time for money . . . I think the poor screenwriter in the linked clip generously compared it to torture at Gitmo.

Nah, this is worse.

Night night, Flock, I've been extremely verbose today and I deserve to give my laptop a good long rest. I was making shrimp with bolognese and spaghettini No. 9 but after thinking about those movies I have totally lost my appetite.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!

2012-01-08T10:19:00.000-08:00

Yes, I'm talking to you, my Flock of nickel-eating Enid Blyton-reading subhuman tribelet of Eskimo headhunters!

There be JOBS available, and NOT of the Steve kind.

If you are original buyers from my Jupiter condo enterprise you will be viewing this "blog" post in the comfort of your 12,567th-floor luxury all Nano-bamboo-composite bedroom, sipping18th-century era Jovian White tea in a Wedgwood porcelain My-Cro-Kleen container while observing Io sink beneath the methane rain-filled SuperCumuloNimboid thunderheadªº artificial horizon and watching Charlie Sheen's YouTube mashup of Buddy Ebsen's eulogy at the Church of Beverly Hillbillies and Foo-Fighters' "Fear of Flying."

How do I know that? That camera that I Implanted in your hairpiece, silly!

Anyway, it's with pleasure that I managed to secure a one-time-only deal with Joe-Bob Branson, the famous Richard's younger transgendered sister, to build an entire capital city -- yes, you're reading it right -- an ENTIRE CAPITAL CITY, on the dwarf planet Pluto (see Pluto as taken from its orbiting moon Goofy IV, below)

Pluto, from Goofy IV (thanks for the EVA, AstroBoyardee!)

and what it means to YOU, my hapless Flock of wingless goons, is that there are jobs. Jobs of every stripe, colour and description. Are you a Risk-based Romulan-Esperanto Translation-interpretation Specialist? There is a job for YOU.

Do you build incredibly detailed miniatures of John Travolta's patio furniture? There is a job for YOU also, my cephalically-challengened friend.

Are you just simply GOOD WITH YOUR teeth? There are 55 openings featuring that job requirement.

You may contact me in the Comments section, below, or can contact my firm's travel consultant Erma Gonzalez at 413-097-53691876-0535536-8131331 ext. 9872767 for details on the exciting fourteen-year trip to the Pluto Planetary Plenium. Free of charge, of course!

If this all doesn't excite the heck out of you, please consider signing up for meditation courses at my Sigmund School for the Blind.

Just What Is It With Tom Cruise?

2012-01-07T13:48:00.000-08:00

I really don't think I have to say ANYTHING after that subject line.

Is he, or is he not, 5-foot 3? Are his teeth four generations removed? Just how gay is he? Laurence-Olivier Gay, or Danny-Kaye-Gaye? Just what is his relationship with John Travolta? Does he fit comfortably on John's lap while John is piloting the 707? How many children has he produced by artificial respiration?

HAVE THEY PERFECTED CGI ENOUGH TO FAKE THE VERY EXISTENCE OF TOM CRUISE????

Furthermore: Why Do I Bother?

2012-01-06T15:06:00.000-08:00

Why do I bother to pretend to write about food when this tripe passes for food writing? Why do I tug at my beard and puzzle about how to frame my next sentence about food when maroons like this can actually be getting paid for speaking their mind about themselves, not about food? I really am downgrading Brits these days . . . with their princes and skinheads and soccer, added to this absolute drivel . . . the place I went to boarding school and got the best possible education in the world at the time seems now to be a shabby shadow of its proud former self.

And did those smelly feet . . .

A Hate-Hate Relationship

2012-01-06T14:00:00.000-08:00

I don't know why I got interested in food. I'm really not interested in food. I make a dish exquisitely, but just to make it. The power of being able to make it, to make it to the best of my ability; that's what is interesting to me. Making good food is possibly the most satisfying skills one can possess on Earth.

Being able to paint is good. Being able to play music is great. Being able to write is fantastic. Being able to design smart-bombs: wowie-zowie. But being able to make food gets instant, identifiable results. It's transient, so the result never lasts. You can't hang a recipe of the raspberry gnocchi you made yesterday on the wall, to be sampled at a later date. You see the food you made in the un-lying faces of the people who are eating it. You can NOT lie about food. You can't disguise your dislike for food not to your taste.

Your face, not even including the amount left on your plate, will betray you, every time. So the food I make and the eating of it by others has to be the most satisfying thing to ever do in the world, at least for me. But see, unfortunately for me, after it's created, I lose interest in it. I taste as I cook, but by the time it's done, I'm no longer hungry. But that's also the way I like it. I make it, others eat it.

These days, I challenge-cook. This means that I don't taste anything until the moment when it all goes out to the eaters. Just to see how sharp I am, or am not. Did I judge the amount of salt perfectly? Brine it for exactly the right length of time? Underdo it or overdo it? I basically cook blind and see what happens. A recipe just becomes a sketch upon which I shall elaborate, and each time I shall elaborate differently. Luckily, I am getting better and better at it -- deaf dumb and blind me and I swear I will still make you a good bolognese.

But at the end of it, I have no real interest on what I make.

That is why it is SO HARD to get interested by people like this.

Back In Montreal

2012-01-06T12:27:00.000-08:00

I must say, my trip from San Francisco through Detroit to Montreal last evening was truly one for the books. If you travel, even just once a year, you really steel yourself for the "ordeal" that might await you; literally, it's completely unpredictable, a toss of the roulette dice.

Actually, I tend to romanticize "the old days" way too much. Before I get to the subject at hand, wrap your mind around this: the year 1985 was the most awful year for aviation since Bleriot flew his plane over a cliff. Literally, THOUSANDS of people died in aviation accidents that year, bringing new meaning to the expression "Ten Jumbo Jets Going Down Each Day." And these were MAJOR, MAJOR accidents, not just some cargo plane flown by drunken Russians in the Congo smashing into some bushmeat market after takeoff.

We're talking Japan Airlines 123 here. Did you know, we've now gone SEVEN FULL YEARS WITHOUT A SINGLE MAJOR PLANE CRASH in ANY CIVILIZED COUNTRY? Yep, Osama bin Mama was really the last major deal, if you ignore the Air France stupidity a couple of years ago (the French and airplanes have yet to complete their honeymoon).

But last night San Francisco airport was a windless oasis. It was so quiet you could hear pepper spray on Occupy protesters all the way from downtown.

But what really struck me, Flock -- because if you pay any attention to this rambling discourse whatsoever -- is that I haven't really flown since the Summer Disaster to Japan. But how things have changed! I was sitting at a bar in SFO airport -- just your average airport bar. But people -- ALL people were WIRED. And I mean, technologically wired. Including me, with my Kindle and MacBook, EVERYONE except the servers -- and they were wired in a different kind of way -- had a Gadget of some kind. Blackberry, Crackberry, iPhone, iFuck, uFuck, it just blew my mind. Someone is on his iPhone two seats away, asking someone to bring him this book that's written by some blogger. I twig to his conversation and ask if Wi-Fi is free at SFO. Dude #2 next to me assures me that it is, if you complete a short survey. Sure enough, it is, and moments later I'm online and at the website of the blogger Dude #1 is reading whose book. Dude #1 says, yeah! Great blog! And I say "montrealfoodblog: don't forget it!" and he says "Awesome, dude!" (There is an awful lot of awe in San Francisco, and even Chinese shuttle bus drivers like to be called "dude.")

And it went on like that . . . EVERY SINGLE FUCKING PERSON ON EVERY SINGLE FUCKING PLANE had some kind of handheld device . . . me being one of them. Talking, texting, chatting, responding, pushing, beeping, ringing AY YAY YAY YAY YAY.

I can't remember the book -- possibly Brave New World -- where everyone is now isolated in their personal bubbles. They communicate with the Hive Mind through a combination of mood-alterers and machines. Like being plugged in to an IV to get the Thought Of The Moment . . . mustn't miss out on that! And it's bizarre and fascinating all at the same time, when you realize YOU'RE ONE OF THEM . . . you are one of the Hive-Zombies, interconnected with all your other Hive-Zombie friends and loved ones . . . YOUR HIVE-ZOMBIE LOVED ONES, Flock!

And you just don't know whether to embrace it, to have a Group Hug, or deny, deny, deny all the ALLEGATIONS, like Michael Jackson . . . and I think I'm slightly nuts from the combination of high altitudes and machines that defy gravity and maybe I should just check out now and leave you good people alone.

Hello, Kitty!

For your edification, I post a most welcome picture: Lulu, in all her feline glory, who has never texted anyone in her entire she-devil life.

Just One More Thing Before I Go . . .

2012-01-05T14:46:00.000-08:00

Just reading some article about the difficulties of working in a big company. How you’re pretty much faceless and decisions come down from someone who’s your boss but you’ve never even seen, let alone talked to and you can pretty much never question why, how or what. Hmm, that kind of sums up the military, come to think of it!

When I think about these types of things, I tend to wonder what ancient man used to do. I mean, in Sumeria, 1890 B.C., there weren’t exactly organizations like Yahoo or General Motors . . .

But having set foot in both worlds (working for a big company, working for myself) I can kind of tell that the former is just not natural. Ancient Man did not wake up to an ancient gong, did not put on his cloak and saddle up the horse, did not walk into a cave hungover and wanting to be anywhere but there, did not greet “the boss” with a tired “Hey what’s up!” and go check the work roster for the “jobs” he had to do today.

Nope, Ancient Man just didn’t do any of that. He woke up at around noon, looked at what remained in the grog bucket and scratched his ass while wondering what was going to be dinner.

His “wife” yelled at him about his lazy brother and he went outside the cave, scratched his ass some more, and then came back inside and lay back down under the bearskins. “No work for me today,” he said, filled his mug with grog and started whittling the cat.

See how that jibes a lot more with my preferred lifestyle?

And Ancient Man sure as fuck didn’t have to anticpate getting on a goddamn plane tonight and fly 5,000 miles back to Montreal.

But let’s hope that the captain of the plane will have done everything that I’ve just said, in the right order, uncomplainingly and most, most definitely, without a hangover.

Why We Desperately Need More Assholes

2012-01-04T13:48:00.000-08:00

Do you think the world doesn't have a big enough supply of assholes? Do you? Do you sit there sometimes in your comfy chair and say half-aloud: "This world really needs another asshole; there can't EVER be one too many." Does anyone near you look over at you nervously and say "Did he just say what I think he just said? Oh no, Lord, no, did he clean his guns yesterday?" No?

Well, get a load of THIS ASSHOLE. I swear, some people just do not seem to have enough time in this world. No, they really don't. They need the extra time to plan hijackings, murders, child abuse, religion and other such amusements that the rest of us just tend to walk on by on. THESE PEOPLE JUST DON'T SEEM TO HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO DO than to be PRIME ASSHOLES. They seem to think that just because we recognize them for what they are: assholes -- that we have an inherent need for MORE OF THEM.

Y'know, sometimes I'm glad there are jihadists out there, beheading people and just generally being assholes, because they serve to remind the rest of us JUST WHAT AN ASSHOLE TRULY IS and why we need more of them in our lives.

Because just imagine if there weren't any assholes? Huh? Just imagine THAT for a small second. *I* sure as fuck would be instantly denied a purpose in life. Yes, I hear what you're saying . . . "There ain't no shortage of assholes, Mister, why you be sayin that?" but if _I DIDN'T_, ***WHO***WOULD***?

I am NOT thereby putting in my candidacy to be an asshole. I just wanted to remind you WHY WE NEED MORE OF THEM TO REMIND US WHY WE NEED THEM.

Why There Was a MontrealFood Blog WAAAY Before This One

2012-01-04T05:16:00.000-08:00

What. You think food writing belongs to the fucking blogosphere? Food shows belong to the Food Network? Anthony Bourdain rules? What the fuck. Really, WTF???????

Before, and I'll almost guarantee it, there were fucking food shows ALL OVER THE PLACE. How do I know? I'll tell you how I know. BECAUSE I WATCHED THEM. Before you little fuckers even knew what the fucking word "food" was, I watched food and food-related shows ALL OVER TV. Yes, there was a LIFE before YOU. An amazing and lively life, thank you VERY MUCH.

Not the ersatz horror that is the "Food Network." Not the Top Chef travesty or Diners and Drive-Ins and "look at this bad boy" bullshit that rules the fucking waves. No. ONCE there were actual shows about FOOD, not about fucking top chefs, not about contestants in some fucking mindless game, there were shows with PEOPLE talking about real food. Thinking about real food.

You poor unpolished fuckers. I really, really feel sorry for you, because this is all you know. THE FOOD NETWORK IS YOUR CHANNEL TO THE FOOD UNIVERSE.

God.

Damn.

Oh No, GOD No . . .

2012-01-03T03:39:00.000-08:00

SCORPIONS CAN SEE WITH THEIR SKINS

The Dark

2012-01-03T03:15:00.000-08:00

The dark is a magnificent place to contemplate Everything. Alone in the Dark is almost incomparable as an experimental realm . . . I'll warrant.

Being Drunk in the Dark and Alone is almost a physics/anthropomorphic experiment in itself. Just look at the legions of data that can be extrapolated.

Used to be, being stoned in the dark was worth something. Being stoned in the dark and alone was huge . . . a monumental mindfuck. Drunk in the dark/ hmm. That seems to be an extremely common situation that is somehow underreported. For whatever reason.

But God only knows what has been written in the wee hours . . . Samuel Taylor Coleridge comes to mind . . . but fucking A, no doubt Hemingway woke up to polish off the third half of a "tequila-monde" several times a night, only to record the moment drunkenly in his latest "book."

Samuel was interrupted by the "Man from Porlock."

Okay. I'm waiting for my man.

Oh Yeah . . .

2012-01-02T13:58:00.000-08:00

Let's get this year underway, Flock!

Almost forgot to say Happy New Year. The usual gang were all here for my Mussaman curry, to which my sister insisted I add FOUR POUNDS of beef . . . ("There is NO WAY this is going to get finished, Laurie!") and when I went to actually get my share after everyone had gone home I found that there was precisely enough left for a garden gnome, and they had eaten ever single carefully-carved slice of my cucumbers AND demolished the pound-plus of my HELLISHLY hot habanero salsa . . . lucky for them there was a bottle of Oban single malt which hadn't been wolfed and was enough to drown my sorrows.

2012 and the year of the new Reckoning. Just can't wait to get underway! Maybe I'll take that memorial Titanic cruise to celebrate the 100th year since its passing. Then again, maybe not. This time the entire country of England might just go down with the ship.

Anonymous: I Like 'Em

2012-01-02T10:24:00.000-08:00

First, read this.

Then think about how this bunch of blowhards have actually become a force to be reckoned with, not just some late-night teens in an IRC chat room. I like their style. I like how they like to take the wind out of REAL blowhards (as illustrated in the article). I like the idea of the Hive Mind watching the fences, so to speak, with no one physically at the helm to take down, because there IS no one physically at the helm, no Queen Bee, no Fuerher. Assassinate one who takes on the role, a dozen, no, a thousand take her place.

No Osama bin Mama here.

The Face of Anonymous?

I used to hang out on IRC in the 90s . . . #macfilez, to be precise -- and let me assure you, they're still going, and I'll bet all the oldsters are still tuned into that channel 24 hours a day seventeen years after it was created, even though their former wisps of bum fluff on their chins are now long grey beards . . . they never give up, these people, and I'll be a standing witness to that. Long after Usenet is just a term on Wikipedia, there are people in the alt forums, still trading little bits of obscure movies and talking their obscure alt talk.

And they are continually being replaced by neunauts (pronounced "noy-nawts"), to possibly coin a phrase -- a vanguard of anonymous dustbusters who have been given the Power of the Internet -- a very real, physical power that can have very real, physical consequences, something that didn't seem to occur to the science-fiction writers who instead conjured up a "rise of the machines" to be our next Armageddon.

Instead, it's a rise of those responsible for the machines; us, of course. Things that can mutate will mutate, often in entirely unexpected ways, and that is what is happening right now with sub-Internet hives like Anonymous.

One just has to hope that the mutation will largely be benevolent, that when it begins to flex its muscles and realizes its true powers, it doesn't just decide to do away with everything that isn't necessary to its existence.

Because just like the Terminator, in fact, far more likely than any assembly of machines, the day will come when the Majority just grows tired of the Minority, and hopefully for all, will mass-merge Humanity in its entirety into the Collective, for its own damn good.

Yes, I like Anonymous. Now: how do I become one?

How Do You Sleep at Night?

2012-01-02T00:23:00.000-08:00

In this case I think John Lennon was very misguided, because I'm pretty sure Paul slept pretty well at night. In fact, Paul probably barely had a thought about John at night. It was JOHN who wasn't sleeping at night.

But what it brings me to is, how do YOU sleep at night? Wouldn't life be a toss in a cotton field with faeries and angels giggling and and throwing you to each other through sun-filled corridors scented with chrysanthemums and silken pillows that rollicked with fun? Wouldn't that just be everyone's dream?

Well, we know it isn't, don't we, sorry for the hard landing.

ALL THE PEOPLE WHOM YOU'VE EVER MET IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE are, like it or not, standing in a LONG LINE to be remembered and recognized. That lowliest waiter in that long-forgotten restaurant . . . hey, you may have forgotten him, but MAYBE HE NEVER FORGOT YOU.

Maybe you're the person in his "Yeah, it was really funny, one day there was this guy . . ." and that would be YOU.

All those old girfriends. What. You think they magically disappeared you from their minds? Are you fucking crazy? Forget girfriends. All your friends. Everyone who ever knew you. Yes, going back to the tiniest time you can remember. Do you think they all forgot you? Did you forget THEM?

Never mind how you sleep at night. Who do you think of at night?

Why Montreal Doesn't Matter

2012-01-01T16:47:00.000-08:00

Montreal is light years away from competing with this hype. Let's all try to keep it that way.

Thoughts on Death

2012-01-01T00:31:00.000-08:00

No really, not just idle conjectures and rambling theories. My wife's mother died about two weeks ago. About a week before that, I was drinking Arrack at her residence home, a bit bored while Brigitte arranged her room. Her mother just looked a bit bewildered, but happy that we were there.

I wasn't a bit bored when I saw some burly young Quebec men on a gunmetal-grey day lower her coffin into the ground.

But what actually happened to Brigitte's mother? I only use her example here because it was the newest, and closest example of human death that I've experienced. I know what Brigitte went through. What did I go through? Total bewilderment mixed with some sort of grim resignation -- some odd thing that always kicks in when you hear of anyone you know who has died. It's always a very scared feeling, such as: oh my god, how is that going to effect me/us/anyone? And then always the odd feeling of pity for the deceased, as if they needed to be here more, that they didn't want to go, that they didn't DESERVE to go . . . and that always, there's that quantifying scale we always seem to come up with, based on a complicated formula of age + deterioration + expectedness (or lack thereof) that no one wrote any books on yet we all seem instinctively to know.

But what actually happened to her? And to my father, and my brother, both gone now many years? They still exist, fiercely so, in my mind, in photos, in videos, in other people's recollections . . . but they're not here. It's still hard to wrap your mind around the fact that they never will ever be here again, in any way, wish or form.

So what happened to them? They, I'm sure, would be the first to want to know.

The thing is, deep inside, I know what happened to them. All of them. As I know what is going to happen to me. They simply stopped. Why is it so hard to grasp that? They stopped, but not in a Place. There is no Place where they stopped. If you really think about it, where were you before you were born? Before you were a sperm or an egg among trillions and trillions who never made it, where were you? Are you afraid of being in that place again? Of course not. Because there wasn't a Place, and there was no You.

In fact, as far as you're concerned, there was no you before your first-ever memory. Are you afraid of that place, where you were before your first-ever memory? Of course you aren't. Other people were aware of you, but you weren't.

And that is where Brigitte's mother is now. In a place where she isn't aware of herself, but other people are. She doesn't know other people love her, but other people do. Just like your cat doesn't really know you love her . . . but you do. Pat your cat and think of that.

There, see? Not too much to be afraid of.

The Only One Awake

2012-01-01T00:03:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I guess I'll commune with this LCD screen as the last seconds of 2011 tick by. Here in Oakland, CA, that's always marked by gunfire. Here we go . . . all the fucking lunatics. Merry Fucking New Year, you sons of bitches. I'm proud to have been a part of it. For the last time.

Never fucking again . . .

As The Time Ticks By

2011-12-31T20:40:00.000-08:00

As this year ends I just feel kind of stupid. About all that remains of my family is in the next room as I type. I'm very happy to be with them.

Brigitte remains alone with our cat Lulu in Montreal. We're in touch with Skype, maybe even hour on the hour. I think the upshot of this New Year's is that in future, I will volunteer to spend it not with my family et. al. Rather just with my wife and our cat and a good movie.

Am I smart, or am I smart?

R.I.P. 2011

2011-12-31T10:17:00.000-08:00

What I Do Every Day

2011-12-30T03:05:00.000-08:00

What I do every day is spend an inordinate amount of time thanking the God of Kwalikor (hey! It's who I happen to believe in!) that I don't hurt anywhere.

No kidding. I make conscious checks: hmm . . . do I hurt here? No. Check. Do I hurt here? No. Check. Then I sidetrack and check if I feel okay. Is my stomach a roiling mass of horror? No? Check. Am I feeling lethargic, unwilling and unhappy? Yes. Check.

But when any of these checks becomes a concern, re: do I hurt anywhere? No, check and it comes back negative, ie. oh yes, I DO hurt, then I remind myself why I make these checks every day just to remind me how lucky I usually am compared to others. So, to make your life more useful when you don't feel great, use my checklist. Any question you say "yes" to, you should have a drink to:

1. Am I above ground?
2. Is my stomach not a mass of troubles, like last week when I seemed to have diarrhea of the worst kind for no apparent reason?
3. Do all the people who call me "friend" still like me?
4. Am I going to be alive after 6 pm. this evening?
5. Will I drink to that at 6:01?
6. Is the thing that I ordered on complete impulse off Amazon in the mail to me as I type?
7. Will I just be like a bear in honey when I receive it?
8. Is this constant sound in my left ear that sounds like a slow, pulsing motor going to be gone by tomorrow?
9. Is life just an illusion and am I going to wake up feeling completely refreshed from having had it, in a place that my my mind can't possibly grasp, in which I view the Foaming Fountains of Eternal Paradise where Hobbits roam free and everywhere is like New Zealand?
10. Do I still have that 47% of my mind that I went to sleep to yesterday?

Why Blogs Die

2011-12-29T11:13:00.000-08:00

Do you remember the first time you actually connected with a computer through the phone to some other computer, and wrote something that you imagined someone would read?

There had to be a first time, and I'll bet you remember it. If you're relatively young, say under 50, people around you, including your parents, may have been doing this already, and it was normal to you to hop on. The word "email" was probably spelled "e-mail" and when some website (web-site) was mentioned on the news or in a commercial, they went through the whole thing: "h-t-t-p-colon-forward-slash-forward-slash-double-you-double-you-double-you-dot-web-site-dot-com" or something very similar. Now no one even bothers with the double-yous.

I had resisted the whole "connecting with the computer" thing. To me, a computer, circa 1993, was just something you used to write things or design things or play games. I'd had a computer for almost 10 years prior to that, but back in the dawn of personal computing, connecting to other computers was for extreme techies; very, very probably whom you didn't know and whom even your friends' friends didn't know.

But eventually the time came when the pressure was too great -- your elder brother was "e-mailing" everyone and you weren't. In my case I was lured by a service called a "BBS" (bulletin board service) sponsored by the Montreal Mirror called "Babylon."

It wasn't the World Wide Web. It was a dialup thing that you didn't have to pay for; it had several different sections that we'd now call forums (maybe that's what they were called then too) and you'd post and people would respond etc.

Well, I actually went out and bought my first modem. I think it was a 14.4-baud thing. Whatever it was, it was slow, but slow compared to what I didn't know so I didn't care. And I remember actually "posting" something to Babylon. I have no idea what, but I remember being embarrassed, frightened, excited and weirded out about what would happen next. And someone must have responded, because the rest is history. That went on for about a year and then the Web started to infiltrate, I moved on and up and so did everyone else, and Babylon shut its doors a couple of years later and it was to each his own.

In 1996 or so I learned HTML and actually created a website, called boulevardmontreal.com (you can still see parts of it at the wayback machine). It wasn't its own domain, of course -- I piggybacked it off my ISP. But believe it or not, I started writing articles for it, as well as restaurant reviews. I'd make general comments, or post something about food or something I'd cooked, all the while having no idea whether anyone was reading it, since there was no comments section and I don't even think my email address was anywhere anyway.

So imagine my surprise when the doyenne of food writing at the time, Lesley Chesterman (critic at the Gazette) somehow found my email address and told me she got some of her ideas of where to go review from some of the stuff I'd written. Wow-wee-wah-hey was what I remember thinking at the time.

That prompted me to create montrealfood.com which at its height was pretty influential, until everyone started going to restaurants and photographing the food and writing about it. That took care of that, and the rest is, again, history. A turbulent period of commercialization began and now it has come down to a smooth system of websites masquerading as blogging sites that "blog" about restaurants and I became totally unnecessary.

Then the great Blog Monster reared its ugly head and suddenly everyone who was anyone had a blog.

These evolved into two camps: the blog-to-have-a-blog blog and the blog-for-exposure/monetary gain blog and all the permutations in between. The former, thankfully, seem to have wilted, dried up and been abandoned and the latter have either become too commercialised to be called a blog or devolved into extreme-niche affairs.

The question is, what really was a blog in the first place, and if it was definable, is that which it was now formally non-existent or near to being so?

I will, of course, always deny that what you are reading now is, or ever has been, a "blog." It's always simply been the ramblings of whatever came to mind, the topics of which were always totally unpredictable. One of the most totally unfocused groups of writing possibly ever assembled upon the face of the Earth. Which is, of course, the only way I'd have it.

But back to the question: is the blog, as I've tried to define here, dead, in decline, or has it simply morphed into something else?

To me, Facebook and Twitter are manufactured, cynical entities with the ultimate objective of enriching their creators. They will morph into some other entity, as they simply can't stay the way they are.

But the "little" blog -- such as that written by esteemed chum Jim Donahue -- is most definitely expired.

Is this, as some folk muse, the lack of an attention span, that people are simply too busy to read more than a few write-bites at a time? I find this very hard to believe.

I myself lament the disappearance of several blogs (you know who you are) who have simply just gone to seed and blown off in the wind. To me, no matter how mundane the content was, it was still a pleasure to be able to drift over to that person's blog and see what had gone on in their world that day -- no matter ONE WHIT whether you personally knew that person or had any involvement in their lives.

It was a daily "doing the rounds," and for a person of routines such as me, it was always a pleasurable routine. Now, I have to confine myself to "News" and "Tech" "blogs" which are impersonal and magazine-like.

Will I quit writing this "blog?" The simple answer is, no, because I don't write it for any other purpose than for the edification of me, and that I was doing it a hell of a lot longer ago than the sorry word "blog" was ever invented.

So yes, let the blog be dead. But whatever you want to call what it is that you've just read -- well, that won't be going away any time soon.

The Cost Of Living

2011-12-28T13:43:00.000-08:00

Cartoon Anatomy

2011-12-23T14:24:00.000-08:00

No bubbles today! Instead, see what this lunatic came up with: he decided to try to figure out what kind of skeletal systems cartoon characters possessed. This is a partial selection:

Thought Bubble of the Day

2011-12-22T12:49:00.000-08:00

Touhaaa!

2011-12-22T09:50:00.001-08:00

Share the Love

2011-12-21T16:56:00.000-08:00

Click to enlargen!

New Format

2011-12-20T22:15:00.000-08:00

Click to embiggen!

Moving Hassles

2011-12-13T15:36:00.000-08:00

Can anyone suggest a good moving company to move from Montreal to New York? I've just bought this place and I need to replace their black piano with my pink piano.

Mighty Mouse

2011-12-13T05:37:00.001-08:00

Watch this mouse do the maze in less than 4 seconds:

Casablanca: The Series

2011-12-10T16:08:00.000-08:00

Since I acquired the entire run of Star Trek: The Next Generation on DVD a couple of weeks back, I've, er, become somewhat immersed. Even though we pay upwards of about $50/month for cable TV here, the selection of viewable fare, to quote Data, is exceedingly paltry. Thus the lame attempt to declare independence.

But my immersion led me to wonder what would happen if, for some reason, Casablanca, with Humphrey Bogart and that Swedish woman, had ever become serialised. You know, the Adventures of Rick.

You'd have a different adventure for Rick each week, instead of having to settle for an eternity of 90 minutes of "Here's To You, Kid." With CGI at the stage at which it is, you could just call in Andy Serkis to reanimate Bogey and we'd have a fantastic 7-season run of Casablanca: The Next Generation. You drink when Bogey drinks. You smoke when Bogey smokes.

The possibilities are boundless. The office is open for script consideration. First episode: Encounter with The Rat Pack.

What is Up

2011-12-07T19:00:00.000-08:00

Hmm . . . I think this is the longest that I haven't posted since the beginning in 2006. So what's up? I don't know. What is depression? Could this be it? Just no interest in anything . . . oh wait! Let's! . . . naaah, let's not.

Some hammer blows that are not conducive to humor or expressiveness . . . that's all.

Off alone to California for the first time in three years on the 13th. No son for Christmas because my ex-wife has officially kidnapped him. Not much else to say . . .

Make It So

2011-11-29T15:01:00.000-08:00

I won't deny I'm a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

But I have a list of questions I'd dearly love the answers to. The only couple of times Brigitte got stuck watching it with me (It's really good! I'd say, No explosions and great plots!) I drove her nuts with my questions.

I will now share them with you!

How come there is not a sheet of paper anywhere in existence on the U.S.S. Enterprise? What do you do when you have to make a trip to the commissary to get stuff for dinner? Laser the list on the back of your hand? Oh, I forgot -- there IS no commissary because one cooks any more.

(When they're not fighting the Borg they're "replicating" dinner. Now would you eat a replicated Kraft Dinner? Oh, I'm having a senior moment -- when we buy them in those boxes, they've already been replicated once, d'oh.)

Why is everyone sitting around on the bridge doing nothing? The captain seemingly wanders to his ready room for the pettiest reason and when he comes back to sit down in the captain's chair, Riker, Troi and The Guest Star follow him in a delicately choreographed dance in which they all end up sitting down at the same time. As if, uh . . . they've rehearsed it.

Captain Picard and Commander Riker, on that spacious Bridge that looks like a Vegas ballroom, often hang out uncomfortably close to each other for the sake of the camera, sometimes shoulders almost touching, just to have a conversation.

Sometimes at the end of the show you get a shot of the whole cast just standing around on the bridge, but very carefully, so no one blocks anyone else from the camera.

The Holodeck, if it can do what they always show it's capable of doing, would be booked months in advance and every "holo-simulation" would be Four-Xd rated marathon orgies.

I could go on (this is where Brigitte broke) . . . where are any waste baskets? How come we never see the cleaning lady? What if someone rang your doorbell and you didn't say "Come?" Could they just come in anyway?

Where are the MPs? Those drinks in Ten-Forward are not all Virgin Marys and lattechinos. How come no one seems to pay for their drinks? There must be restaurants on a ship that big. Where are they?

How come no one just beams himself into a crew-woman's cabin to watch her take a shower? The technology is there.

How come we never see children wandering down the aisles like all the other "filler" crew members? We know they're there.

Why does every single thing you do require a beep of some kind?

And last but not least, WHY DOES EVERYTHING ALWAYS COME OUT RIGHT IN THE END?????

Have your answers replicated on my desk tomorrow morning.

My Birthday and All Sorts of Fun Things

2011-11-29T14:26:00.000-08:00

Chapter I

It was my birthday yesterday, Flock! I was one day older than I had been the day before! However, almost every restaurant being closed on a Monday, we made a filet-mignon dinner instead.

This photo comes nowhere near to doing it justice, but there was juicy medium-rare filet mignon, cast-iron fried "dice" (I call them that because they're potatoes cut to almost the same dimensions as dice), wild mushroom Mercy sauce (because it's so good that it's torture when it's gone) and corn. Odd combination, maybe, but your mouth would heartily disagree.

If I had been , say, fourteen years old on my birthday and wondering what dinner I would be having fifty years hence, I wouldn't have been able to imagine that I would some day have the power to create a meal of such decadence. That was the kind kind of food . . . uh . . . old people ate.

Chapter II

I was roughly roused by Brigitte at 6:30 this morning because I had to make a phone call to Japan. It was 8:30 p.m. there.

In this phone call I was informed by my ex-wife that there was "no possibility" of her letting me pick up my son for Christmas because of a letter I was forced to send (she has no landline and can't receive long distance calls and no Internet, so everything has to be done through her parents, who quite frankly wish I'd tumble under a bus, the sooner the better) with a mild threat of legal intervention if she didn't let me talk to him at least once a week; thus, after all these years of supposedly amicable communication, she has gone and done the official deed of kidnapping him. Stay tuned, folks -- this could get Mel Gibsony.

(Japan, a so-called first-world nation, is the only so-called first-world nation that does not observe the Hague convention regarding custody of children. Thus even if my ex-wife was a drug addict who beat my son every day and had multiple boyfriends, there is no court there that would allow me even to appear before it to plead for custody. In 99% of cases, regardless of circumstance, the custody reverts to the mother. Now you know why I wrote the post directly preceding this one.)

Chapter III

Filet mignon sandwiches for dinner!!!!!!

New Rankings

2011-11-29T05:28:00.000-08:00

As you know, I've kind of loosely kept a list of Whos' On Top in the world as far as being the worst race/ideology/record of abuse and, for reasons known only to me at the moment, Japan LEAPS into the lead with at least a head ahead of the rest to take the lead.

This time it's about the general Japanese mindset. My conclusion is: "They're all so fucked up that using psychiatry would be like putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound to the head."

Midwinter Doldrums

2011-11-26T18:13:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I know it's not even the beginning of winter. But I feel so blah that, as you've noticed, I haven't posted a thing in weeks. Sorry, Flock.

You deserve a rant at least once a week but I'm afraid I don't even have the energy for that. For no apparent reason my appetite has been nil in recent weeks. I can survive on some potato chips for a midday snack and then two or three bites of whatever's for dinner. I'm almost never hungry.

I sleep badly. Helped by sleeping pills, it's mostly a mire of dream after dream. The weather is sameness . . . to me, a sunny day is extra-depressing. I prefer the rain/snowy doldrums.

A lot of it is caused by a unilateral lack of communication with my son in Japan. It's pretty much boiled down to they (the triumvirate: my ex and her parents) have decided communication between father and son is no longer "necessary." And I can't do a fucking thing about it, aside from flying over there unannounced and show up at their doorstep.

I have one bright spot to report -- when I ordered a Kindle, I accidentally ordered two by mistake. Disgusted because it had no backlight, I sent one back, but then the other one arrived. I reluctantly embraced it and haven't regretted it. I've downloaded about seven books at maybe a cost of $30 and have a lot of reading to do -- as long as there is light.

Oh, and Monday I turn the non-age of 54.

Your First Mac?

2011-11-16T06:02:00.000-08:00

I was reading an article about when people got their first Macs. Well, I got mine in around 1986, but I think the question should be, what was the first truly cool thing you did with a Mac?

I think this illustration is. I think I did it in 1994. Pretty cool, eh?

Getting Away With It

2011-11-12T23:17:00.000-08:00

Do you know how easy it would be to get away with murder? I read about some helicopter crash where some "Ant-drug Czar" is eliminated Now they're pinning this on sub-par weather conditions. Oh sure, a narco-traficante was nowhere in sight.

I remember (with regret, but it was a sign of the times) that when we lived in Kinshasa, Zaire in the early 70s, we briefly discussed the idea that if we went out at random, on a random night very late at night, when no one was around (that was most nights) we could, if we'd had a gun, have just gone up to a stranger and shot him to death.

No one would EVER have suspected us.

My point is not that I ever wanted to get away with a murder; my point is that MOST PEOPLE get away with a murder. The more gangster-like and organized they are, they can get away with countless DOZENS of murders. Chances are that ever single one of those that pulled the trigger will die a quiet death surrounded by friends and family at a late age.

Pity our poor cops and justice system . . . even though they're supposedly the best in the world, I could still get up (at 2:11 a.m.) in nondescript blue jeans with an ordinary coat that people wear every day, walk to the nearest bus stop and wait for that FUCKING CROWD OF TEENAGE IDIOTS WHO'VE JUST LEFT THE BARS, as they do ever Saturday night, and make one of them an inch smaller, permanently.

Hmm . . now where IS that Colt 45 my dad left me . . . .

Happy 11/11/11 11:11:11 p.m.

2011-11-11T20:25:00.000-08:00

Even though the time doesn't show it, this glass of champagne was poured at 11:11:11 p.m. Damn good champagne it is, too.

The Power of One

2011-11-11T06:55:00.000-08:00

Yes, Flock, today is 11/11/11. You have two chances today to celebrate, as this won't come around again until you're, oh, 150 years old. Break out the champagne at 11 minutes and 11 seconds past 11 a.m. and you will be celebrating 11/11/11, 11:11:11 a.m. Conversely, do it at 11:11:11 p.m. tonight. Or do both! (you can also have a mini-celebration at 1:11 p.m)

Remember, there can only be one date like this -- all the rest will have to be things like 12/12/12, which isn't at all the same.

Say it out loud to a Japanese! He'll think you've got rabies! (Dogs in Japan go "Wan Wan!") Go to your local maternity ward and substitute a Talking Betsy doll for a newborn born at exactly 11:11!

Bad Guys Fighting Evil?

2011-11-09T07:36:00.000-08:00

Anonymous hides behind Guy Fawkes masks

That seems to be the case. In case you've been exploring 1,000 foot caves in Popocataptl for the past three years, there's a vicious group of bloodthirsty murderers in Mexico who call themselves Zetas. Their pleasant exploits include regularly chain-sawing the heads off men, women and children and just about shooting anyone who so much as looks at them.

These are bad, bad people, flock -- they make the Einsatzgruppen look like a bunch of kindly young soldiers off to have a Sunday afternoon plink at a few Jews in nearby woods, with schnapps to follow.

Recently however, up has popped another group of not-so-bad guys, who call themselves Anonymous. They seem to be a motley crew of hackers dedicated to, well, doing whatever they want to do. Quote: "We [Anonymous] just happen to be a group of people on the internet who need — just kind of an outlet to do as we wish, that we wouldn't be able to do in regular society."

Well, that can be bad or it can be good, depending on to whom you're speaking. I myself think that it's about time.

Recently, apparently, they've decided to take on the Zetas. (I know, sounds like an L. Ron Hubbard novel, doesn't it? All we need is a few Engrams. (Boss Anonymous to be played by John Travolta.) I don't know how it all started, but apparently a member of Anonymous was kidnapped by the Zetas. The Zetas responded by threatening to post the names, addresses and home phone numbers of every corrupt cop, taxi driver, military officer etc. known to be aiding and abetting the Zetas (well, you can pretty much infer that the entire town of Juarez is just a suburb of Zetaville -- they should issue passports!)

So apparently the release of this information so has the Zetas' knickers in a twist that they released their Anonymous guy. But now Anonymous have upped the stakes.

They just don't like the Zetas, they inform us in this clever video, and they're threatening to do it anyway, just to see how many "law-enforcement" officers swoop in and arrest all the Zeta co-thugs.

And the Zetas are promising to kill ten people for every name exposed. Christ, if Anonymous exposed every name on the list, Mexico would suddenly become a very empty place . . . If there were a place to send donations to help Anonymous in this admirable quest, I'd leave ten dollars in the bank and give the rest to them.

Occupy: Misdirected?

2011-11-06T11:39:00.000-08:00

Yes, I can imagine being a 22-year old college student in some urban area of America or Canada. What are you doing? Majoring in sociology? History? One of the traditional "comfy" majors that all North Americans have done since our grandfathers can remember? What, Drama? No, tell me no. An Arts major? Worst of all, an ENGLISH MAJOR? MARINE BIOLOGY????

Well guess what, Miss Priss or Mr. Rockne, you AREN'T going to be one of the so-called "One percent." Don't even go there in your mind. Settle into buying lottery tickets, working at the A&W till you're through school, and then LOOK AT THE $120,000 STUDENT LOAN doing a colostomy up your ass. I heard a rumour that these student-loan people -- a nation of zombies, if you ask me -- can't declare bankruptcy. If this is true, your WHOLE LIFE IS FUCKED before you even get a chance to begin it. See, life does not begin when you're born. If life is gauged at a 70-year expectancy, then you actually only have about FIFTY YEARS TO LIVE, TWENTY of which will probably end up in you not being so very "productive."

So in fact, you only have THIRTY YEARS to make that "One Percent." Which leads me to believe that:

The One Percent have won the lottery. Yes, you read me right. Ten thousand things that could have gone wrong on their ascent to the One went right. They had the right parents. They lived in the right place. Their one talent was happily recognized early. They took every advantage of that one talent. They mowed others down to succeed and didn't care about it. They broke rules that didn't suit them -- and got away with it.

They BARGED THEIR WAY THROUGH LIFE at the expense of everyone and anyone, including themselves.

You name me just ONE ONE-PERCENTER who does not fit my formula.

Ya wanna be a One-Percenter, huh, Occupy kids? Or, more easily, you want to bring them down?

Your sheer naïveté astounds me.

Oh and a passing shot: to a five-year old kid living in Papua New Guinea, YOU'RE THE ONE PERCENTER.

Fuck Occupy.

2011-11-05T22:32:00.000-07:00

But get this: some guy's alarm clock goes off at 6:30 a.m. He wakes with a hilarious hangover, shaves, gets dressed and then heads out to his Mercedes.

Shows up at the office fifteen minutes late. Maybe snorts some coke. Then gets on the floor. Negotiates $15.9M worth of deals.

Calls his "wife" and tells her he'll be home late.

Goes out drinking, gets smashed with his colleagues, maybe negotiates a "deal" with a female coworker.

Camps out at her house till two, drives home one-eyed and plomps into bed with his wife.

Repeat.

THIS is why the Occupy dorks occupy.

Welcome to America. The land of the free.

Grok This

2011-10-31T10:06:00.000-07:00

If you compressed 750 million years of Earth's history -- that's back to a time before life existed -- into a year, the Declaration of Independence would be signed seven seconds before midnight of December 31st.

They Should . . .

2011-10-23T14:11:00.000-07:00

. . . print this out and send a copy to the mother of every starving child in Somalia. They'd really get a kick out of it.

Quote of the Day

2011-10-22T13:04:00.000-07:00

From a wraparound-sunglassed rapper-cum Bedouin-looking dude, among the throng of rebels whooping and chanting near the drainage ditch where Gaddafi was yanked out and whacked, speaking to a British news camera in a very heavy Arabic accent, addressing the deceased "King of Kings":

"I will go to Paradiss and you will go to Hell, in'sh'allah!" (hearty chuckles all round)

A Couple of Folk Seriously Watching Their Asses Right About Now

2011-10-21T15:13:00.000-07:00

They would be:

Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen
Bashar Al-Assad of Syria
Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain
Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia
Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria

and presumably half a dozen or more rulers of failed African states.

Regrettably, we cannot yet add to this list Kim-jong-il of North Korea. The key words here are “not yet.”

And look, they’re doing it all by themselves, with no intevention from “The World’s Policeman.”

That is what I call progress.

Two Sentences We'll Never Hear again; One Regrettably, One Very Happily

2011-10-21T14:57:00.000-07:00

"Apple CEO Steve Jobs started off his keynote speech with a dramatic flourish, announcing the highly-anticipated . . ."

"A defiant Muammar Gaddafi on Monday appeared on Libyan TV, lashing out at . . ."

Kindling Part II: The Dumbness

2011-10-19T06:29:00.000-07:00

My Kindle 3 arrived yesterday. I was so excited I could barely wait to try it out.

Works GREAT! I thought as I watched the crisp text on the screen, while downloading a book from Amazon. Then I thought: Hmm, this is kind of dim. Where's the brightness control? I turn off the light next to me. Can't read a word. Turn on the light. Hold it under the light. Crisp, clear text! Where is the brightness control? The contrast? Google "how to increase brightness Kindle 3."

Guess what? THERE IS NO BRIGHTNESS. You CAN'T read it except under circumstances in which you would normally read a book.

Why the fuck would I want to get a little machine that I can't enjoy in dim light, that they actually SELL A $40 LIGHT FOR????

Guess what, Amazon: the operation was a great success but the patient was dead before we began.

Kindling

2011-10-17T18:47:00.000-07:00

I have a habit that drives Brigitte nuts (she has one that drives me nuts, but more on that later). I love to read in bed. I think I've done this since I was very small, but I can't remember. I certainly didn't in boarding school. The only thing to do there after lights out was to annoy the "dorm boy/master" or whatever the fuck he was called by deliberately pronouncing the word "Countstable" the way it was supposed to be said except changing it back to the way it reads when he asked me "What was that you said just now, Robinson?" I got a huge bunch of laughs out of that one, because I was "The Yank" and wasn't supposed to be able to speak the British Language the way the folks at Tottenham Gdns. Estates did. So I got away with a lot of things, even with the masters, whom I would ridicule mercilessly, at great risk (oh believe me, I always paid for it in the end).

Cunstable. Take that, Bothwick. Cunstable. That's what I said.

Anyway, It disturbs Brigitte because invariably I have to have a source of light. (Well, duh.) But these stupid Itty-Titty book light fuckers burn out on a regular basis an the only other source is my table halogen . . . which people in Japan at dawn see rise majestically every time I turn it on.

So yes!! Instead of lugging Gerald Durrell's massive 1,000-page-plus biography and the Titty light I will have a KINDLE. Three weeks of battery power!!!!!!!! (The lying fucks.)

I have to go empty the dishes now but at some point I'll tell you what Brigitte does that annoys me. If I could only think of something . . .

New Horror Flicks

2011-10-17T06:39:00.000-07:00

Don't you think we need more horror flicks? No, I mean really horror. Kind of like the one I watched the other day where two men, hands tied behind their backs against a white wall, got decapitated in living color, one in spectacular chainsaw fashion and the other just mugged like a goat.

Oh quick "Well, why did you watch?"

Because I had to watch these two Mexican men's lives being snuffed out in Hollywood glory because YOU HAVE TO. "Scarface" is no longer a fantasy. The drug trade is no longer a game. These people are monsters. Fuck Afghanistan. Launch 2,000 drones on these cabrons and WIPE THEM ALL OUT.

Oliver Stone, get your ass on the task. It's obvious you're the only one qualified.

New Struggle

2011-10-15T02:09:00.000-07:00

Looks like I'm now going to have to fight for this boy:

Hang in there, Tai-chan!

Fall Poem

2011-10-14T15:31:00.000-07:00

The tinkle of a Lulu bell

The hiss of rain on autumn streets

A sleeping Brigou dreaming dreams

Describe the place my cosmos meets.

What's up 2-Nite?

2011-10-09T05:46:00.000-07:00

Seeing as how I'm in such an expansive mood, I was wondering how you eighty or so followers would feel like getting together right here in my living room this evening? I mean, no pressure, I'm making Pizza anyway, so an extra 80 of you wouldn't be overmuch. (And you can't smell it yet, but there's even a hint of Hermès, the brand of men's, uh . . . perfume so ridiculous you have to reacquaintify yourself with, I believe the game's name is Twister in order to actually type it . . . .

Just as long as you realize that Brigitte's bathroom is off limits, mine in the only good one, and no, you can not take a bath, and if you don't bring your own wine, Balzac is a trusted friend that will deliver you to the ambulance with infinite compassion, then a good time should be had by all.

Balzac

Progress

2011-10-09T05:11:00.000-07:00

Did you know that, according to the psychiatric thinking of the time, when I was a child, I could have been lobotomized? Not only could I have been routinely lobotomized, it would have been by the method of pushing the equivalent of large knitting needles behind your eyes while you were in a coma from electroshock therapy and just wagging them around inside your head until they'd cut as many connections as the "surgeons" saw fit?

Then you'd hopefully be cured. Yes, the surgeon's rabbit's paw, "hopefully." This, my dear friends, is WITHIN MY LIFETIME.

Thank god for Tom Cruise and his eternal wisdom.

A Supercomputer that Confirms the Past!

2011-10-09T04:52:00.000-07:00

A supercomputer in America predicted the revolutions in Egypt and Libya and located where Osama Bin Laden was, according to an academic - but only after the events had happened.

Kalev Leetaru from the University of Illinois fed over 100 million articles into the University of Tennessee SGI Altix supercomputer Nautilus. The computer analysed the mood of international news stories focusing on the incidences and locations of emotive words like 'terrible' or 'good' - which Leetaru called 'automated sentence mining' - before converting them into geographical co-ordinates.

Using the tone and location of the reports, Nautilus predicted the outcome of the Arab Spring and the location of Bin Laden to an area with a 125-mile radius in northern Pakistan, when many experts thought Bin Laden was hiding in Afghanistan.

In his study 'Culturomics 2.0: Forecasting Large-Scale Human Behaviour Using Global News Media Tone in Time and Space', Leetaru explained: "Applying tone and geographic analysis to a 30-year worldwide news archive, global news tone is found to have forecasted the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, including the removal of Egyptian President Mubarak, predicted the stability of Saudi Arabia (at least through May 2011), estimated Osama Bin Laden's likely hiding place as a 200km radius in Northern Pakistan that includes Abbotabad, and offered a new look at the world's cultural affiliations."

Leetaru said that although his study was done retrospectively to things that had already happened, it could be adapted to work in the present.

OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG.

T
H
E

M
I
N
D

B
O
G
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L
E
S
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OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.

OMG. OMFG.OMG.OMFG.OMFGG.

Bagger Bastard Part II

2011-10-08T07:23:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs

2011-10-05T21:21:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs died. He was only two years older than me. He did nothing wrong! By all rights he should have lived to a hundred. If someone had crazily ever come up to me and said "Steve Jobs is going to die at 56 -- only you have the power to stop this happening. Unfortunately, in order to do so, you must die in his place." I would have done it a hundred times over.

It's just not fair! My father died at 86 after fighting the Nazis and being a good guy for the rest of his life. He died of old age. That's fair. But the dying of Steve is just not fair . . . the "god" that so many people evoke is a laughing, vengeful god . . . an aberration of that kindly old man we all know. No, more like a bitter, arbitrary god, given to sadistic displays of angry impulses, a god who looks at His work and frequently gets pissed off and destroys 50% of it whenever he hasn't had His morning cigarette.

Not that God has anything to do with Steve. I mourn the loss of him. There will never be another Steve. there never has been and there never will be again. He has joined the ranks of the Impossibles, the true superhumans who somehow one day decided to come down and join us mortals here on Earth.

I guarantee, much like Captain Kirk will echo on into ages who only can read of him on history pads, Steve will live on among us for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.

Go good, Stevie boy. The garage was a good choice.

Could I be . . . DEPRESSED?

2011-10-03T05:06:00.000-07:00

Nah, that's not possible. But the clinician in me argues with the denier in me. I see signs where there are none; to wit, my accidentally misspelling of "argues" above.

Just the fact that I not only let it stand but actually commented on it confirms my initial diagnosis: I am depressed. Depressed people let not-typos get by. (A not-typo is an actual grammatical or punctuational mistake, like saying thing like "and I could tell the passenger's were all on dope." See? Apostrophes don't just hop along for the typo-ride, they appear because you deliberately typed them.)(Because you are depressed and just don't care any more.)

So (left hand fingers thrumming on desktop while right hand does all the typing) what can be done? What SHOULD be done? I'm now seriously thinking about resurrecting Bagger Bastard. To shake you clod of sheep of my flock AWAKE again.

Hell-OOOO . . . . (rapping of knuckles on forehead sound) . . . . ANYBODY HOME?

I should mind-slough my depression onto you with my meta-psychic techniques developed over YEARS and mind-parasite YOUR feelings of goodness, happiness and general self-worth. Oh wait, that's Facebook.

I hate it when I insult my intelligence. I am not depressed; I'm merely praying for an Uzbek Spring.

Oh, Go Ahead . . . Put On Your Party Hat!

2011-09-27T23:29:00.001-07:00

Like it's 1999!

Rare TV Review

2011-09-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

Well, my faithful flock, I must say that in these pages -- must be over a thousand of them by now, I fear -- I have never "reviewed" or even commented on a TV show. I don't particularly feel like doing so now, but since the subject matter is so dear to my heart, I can't resist.

I'm referring to the new series "Pan Am." I suppose you've noticed that it isn't called "TWA" or "Delta." Or "Laker Airways," for that matter.

Nope. It's where my father worked for the first 17 years of my life. I have a LOT of memories of Pan Am. (What, your father worked at Nelson Mining Consolidated? Get your own series.)

But . . . for some reason, no matter how they try, NO ONE can manage to recreate an earlier era so that you believe you are THERE. The sixties were the sixties -- you can spot it instantly when it's the REAL sixties and, try as they might, spot it instantly when it's not the real sixties. Oh, sure, they could shoot it in very old videotape or even film, to give it that soft-edged "old" fuzziness, but still . . . the costumes are no doubt thoroughly researched to the last detail, but . . . it just doesn't wash.

I'll tell you what washes: the plane interiors are faithful, down to the Montgolfier balloons that festoon a dividing panel between the lounge (where I often sat) and First Class. The uniforms were spot on. But the actors were purely out of the 21st century.

The storyline was nothing to write home about. Everyone compares this series to "Mad Men" but since I've never seen that, I have no idea what they're on about.

It isn't a comedy.

It isn't a drama.

It's the kind of "Let's get six storylines going that we can switch back and forth to during the whole run" so I assume that makes it a soap opera.

The pilots are astonishingly young and handsome. Pilots who fly for the premier airline in the world are invariably in their fifties, not in their twenties. The stewardesses are impossibly model-like, nothing like the stews I remember from my childhood.

And my one very, very pet peeve: 707s were so loud that you had to shout to your seatmate directly into his ear, never mind whispering under your breath to someone three feet away. I guess that wouldn't make for good television.

Will it succeed? Well, they seem to have dropped a bucket of tropes into the first episode, including a mysterious "man from MI-6" and a French stewardess having an affair.

But you can bet that my carry-on Pan Am bag just acquired a whole lot more cachet.

Black and the Colours of Autumn

2011-09-25T15:11:00.000-07:00

Lulu, our resident Ghost, contemplates the wonders of the ivy that I've been patiently training for the past two years. Can't wait for this picture next year,

Happy Harvest, Lulu-chan!

Finally: Vindication

2011-09-24T23:04:00.000-07:00

Oh, don't worry -- I didn't need to be vindicated. I always knew it. But this article just cements my ideas about peasants endowed with a little power.

What I Ate (#1023 in a Series)

2011-09-19T17:31:00.000-07:00

Chicken Fajita 3.0.2

I really don't know the difference between a fajita, a taco or a burrito, but sometimes these are just the most fantastic things to make. Mine has everything in it: hot, cold, crunchy, soft, spicy, veggie, meaty, cheesy, tomatoey, wheaty, toasty . . . can't say that about too many foods. And it's as easy and complex to whatever degree you're in the mood for. You could just slap one together with whatever's in the fridge, or you can lavish some care on it, which is what I did.

Nick's Spicy Niquita

Salsa

Ingredients
1 lb. cherry tomatoes (about 50 or so), halved
2 large jalapeños or serrano chilies, roughly chopped
4 large cloves garlic, diced
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Method

This is a my version of the Moroccan dish "Salade cuite," meaning "cooked salad." Possible additions would be chopped onions or cilantro to finish. Assemble all ingredients in a baking dish. Mix thoroughly, making sure everything's nicely coated with the olive oil. Salt liberally. Preheat the oven to about 350º and bake uncovered, stirring occasionally, for about an hour. Remove from the oven, cover and let stand until salsa comes to room temperature.

Filling

Ingredients
1 cup chicken, oven roasted and well seasoned

1/2 red pepper, cut into rings

1/2 large red onion, cut into rings

4 large cloves garlic, diced

Diced chilies to taste

Sauté the vegetables in a little olive oil until cooked through; a little char on them won't hurt. Just before filling your tortilla, add the chicken in to reheat.

Assembly

Warm a flour tortilla. I put a sheet of aluminum foil on my electric burner and heat the tortilla on medium until I get some char on both sides.

The way I like mine is to layer a heap of the chicken mixture on the bottom, followed by a liberal dose of salsa, then a liberal sprinkling of cilantro, then some grated cheese (Asiago is a particular favorite), a little chopped red onion and finally a handful of lettuce (baby lettuce mix would be good here).

Roll your creation up tightly and carefully and serve with a nice Pinot Grigio or Sauterne.

The First Glimpse of Neptunium

2011-09-17T12:25:00.000-07:00

I'm back reading my Atomic Bomb book. A lot of it is extremely dry, and even though I've read it at least a dozen times I can't even come close to understanding the physics mumbo-jumbo. It must be one of the most complex achievements ever come up with by humanity, and it can all be summed up with "Boys With Toys."

Anyway, a couple of things: did you know that Plutonium was initially called Neptunium? Also, it was completely hypothetical for at least a couple of years until they synthesized it. And the first morsel of plutonium that was ever seen by mortal eye took days to make and ended up being smaller than a grain of sand.

A grain of sand, mind you, if anyone were able to take it to critical mass, would be enough to obliterate a block of apartments.

Hell -- the shooting of a neutron into the nucleus of an atom -- JUST ONE ATOM -- (which of course you know is called fission), produces enough energy to make a visible grain of sand visibly jump. And there are 78,000,000,000,000,000,000 (one quintillion) atoms in a grain of sand; far, far more than there are stars in our galaxy.

That's about as much physics as I can stand today.

Enough plutonium to completely erase the island of Manhattan

Around The World In Four Days

2011-09-14T00:54:00.000-07:00

God, this is becoming something of a singsong. I should just carbon-copy one of my old "Japan Trip" posts. It always begins the same ways; first the dread. It's not fear of flying -- not that at all. I love being on a plane. Turbulence or odd noises don't worry me in the least. It's the dread of unexpected huge lines . . . the stop-and-shuffle plod that's better reminiscent of Soviet bread lines . . . the huge DUMBNESS behind it all. The one thing I hate most is asking myself why people are so gosh-darned DUMB. Not the counting-pennies-at-the-checkout-line dumb, but dumbness that extends to people who are supposed to be tasked to PROTECT you dumb.

The dread of the overzealous customs officer, freshly one year out of community college, who suddenly realizes she can put you in FUCKING JAIL if you breathe wrong. This kind of nameless dread, the utter sense of helplessness -- it's that that paralyzes me to the core.

Okay, it's official: I'm a predictability freak. And life is a hopeless game of trying to predict what's going to happen. Make rules, they don't work. "Monday, no bank, no official institutions. Wednesday good. Avoid line with white hair in it. Stay away from U-Haul truck. Don't forget Gravol under any circumstances."

Trouble is, none of this works. And if you think that you've got the jump on the polarity-plug problem by deliberately trying to plug it in the opposite way to what your instinct says, you will always be wrong. And if you see through that and try to plug it in the way your instinct said in the first place, you will be wrong . . . again.

But as usual, this kind of Twilight Zone reality kicked in the whole Japan trip. What I thought would happen didn't happen. What I didn't think would happen happened. But I learned a few things this trip (I always do):

1. Have your shit wired tight. Have a routine to where you store your precious stuff. Always check and cross check, even if you think you did. One mistake -- leaving your credit card at a fast food restaurant in Buttfuck Idaho, and you're homeless.

2. Try to make negative things positive. Flight delayed? Come up with a creative crack to entertain the gate agent. I have made more first class upgrades with a few jokes than Jerry Lewis has won the Palme d'Or.

3. Give up when it's useless. Never resist in the face of tinpot dictator security/immigration/gate agent power. They swagger, but anything you do to antagonize them is going to get you in far more trouble than you planned. They know it. I've lived in quite a few "developing" countries where swaggering comes as a job requirement for those with even a smidgeon of authority. Don't think that just because we're "developed" that anything is any different.

4. Be cunning. Use every trick at your disposal to stand out from the crowd, in a positive way. Don't dress like a slob with a reverse ball-cap and a Giants T-shirt.

5. Never blame the drones for what was created by their masters.

6. Uhhh, don't do this.

Well, I could go on. But let's just say I was losing all hope on my way back . . . I never panic on a plane because the plane is freaking me out, but this time I almost panicked at the thought of having to complete the rest of the journey. I was just so fucking tired . . . one more step, one more gate, one more immigration form really had me on the edge of losing it. But, as these things often happen, an Angel stepped in at just the right time to clear me and let me reboot -- in this case, a seatmate who made me completely ditch all my troubles and concentrate on other things than worry. He was an Apple salesman with a cool laptop who just took me out of my funk and reminded me that, hey, not everyone's out to kill you. And just reflecting from his positive attitude just made all the troubles go away.

6. Sometimes there is just no explanation for what happens. After 54 years, I'm still learning this.

The Horror

2011-09-09T09:22:00.000-07:00

There's' nothing like an attack of humor to relieve the horror of flying to Japan. If I can maintain my sense of humor . . . when I'm not falling-down-sedated, that is, I'll be A-OKAY. I can imagine my father and 10,000 like him flew all their missions half in the bag, but a sense of humor is also good. That's what I will rely on tomorrow.

Awww, Not Japan Again

2011-09-09T04:52:00.000-07:00

Aww, but yes. Japan again. To be specific, tomorrow at this exact time I will probably just be landing in Detroit with the horrific future of Seattle and then Osaka . . . and then the return trip.

The return is always by far the worst. I'll be alone. Oh sure, Brigitte will be waiting for me but it will be an endless nightmare of transportation, especially on this happy anniversary.

But unlike last time, when I predicted fair skies, I'll be heading into this one with my horns to the ground. It's always better that way; pretend that bad things are lurking around every corner, and it'll all be okay. I frankly can't see a single positive thing this time around, except for the fact that it could be my last.

I'll be leaving my ten-year-old son in Japan until Christmas and I just can't stand the thought. If Brigitte weren't here waiting for me and Lulu the cat, my core would be deeply shaken. . . I feel like this is the straw whip for my idiocies of years past, that now I have to pay up, although I know that's patently ridiculous.

I just wish I could sedate myself into nowheresville and somehow be back here in front of this computer after having made the trip. I know the time will come, but I just can't wait that long . . . this is going to be the longest dentist's chair ever.

Wish me luck.

Reading

2011-08-26T13:55:00.000-07:00

God, I'm showing my age.

Brigitte and I were talking last night about the entertainment we had as kids, and I was able to up even her pathetic story! "All we had was this old radio, and we'd cuddle around it and listen." This conversation, by the way, was inspired by something I read about an incredibly bad idea, on par with smell-o-vision: some suit came up with the concept of an "interactive" way to read. You read this e-book thingy, but when you come to certain passages, like "The footsteps became louder and louder" audio footsteps appear on your earbuds. When it says "The wind sighed through the trees . . . " uh, okay, you get the point.

I mean, what's the bloody point? The whole point of great literature is that through the writer, your IMAGINATION is forced to work. Obviously, a great writer is going to make your imagining a whole lot more enjoyable than a lousy writer. Otherwise, why bother having a writer? (Side note: I cleaned up our library yesterday and had dug out a book about the making of the atomic bomb. I wanted HER to get into it too, so I started reading aloud in what I thought was a deep, sonorous voice. She started laughing. "Why are you laughing?" say I. "You sound like that guy on all those animal shows."

I was deeply offended. That guy. THAT GUY happens to be Sir David Attenborough Guy. But I digress!!)

Anyway, I pointed out to Brigitte that when I was growing up, we didn't even have a radio. We had a "phonograph" upon which my parents would play Sinatra or musicals (they were very popular back then) or classical. That was it. That . . . and books. According to my mother, I was reading quite capably at three years old. I hardly think that's possible, but that's what she says. But that's all we had. That's all my parents had too.

(cue tiny violin on shoulder)

And we had to walk twelve miles to school . . . and had the same pair of shoes for ten years and thin gruel for breakfast lunch and dinner yada yada yada

The Daily Word

2011-08-25T12:13:00.000-07:00

Can anybody explain to me why the word "propinquity" is not used more in daily conversation? Say, in an informal, joking-around kind of way? Or an intimate conversation between new lovers? Or in a terse aside among soldiers involved in a firefight with insurgents two klicks from Fallujah city center?

I feel it's most unfair that "propinquity" has been banished to occasional usage in little-read historical theses and confined to verbal use only among particle physicists and lawyers in remote villages in India.

Anyone up for a nice old-fashioned sitdown "work-to-rule" strike to advance the cause of more usage of the word "propinquity"?

Easy now, no shoving or pushing allowed on the premises.

If Words Had a Weight

2011-08-25T01:23:00.000-07:00

I've always wondered about this, as I'm fascinated about what the power the word, be it it written, or spoken, has over people. Obviously certain words carry a lot more weight than others. Again, I'm referring to both the spoken and the written word.

To someone who cannot read, obviously the spoken word is the most powerful. But to someone who cannot hear, the written word, apart from sign language, becomes the only means of communication.

To someone who cannot hear nor see, obviously this becomes beyond the scope of what I'm trying to get at.

But it just occurred to me that the most powerful word in the entire speaking world of humans is "me."

Just summoning the word to the mind bespeaks whole fountains of emotion, certainly nothing like "I" or "you". "Me" might possibly be the single most important word, in any language, in any form, indeed, even in non-human form, that exists on this planet.

To ME, this word rates a ten-plus on any scale. How about you?

Flotillas to Syria

2011-08-24T15:30:00.000-07:00

Hmm, little slow around here of late. Either that or my meds aren't working any more.

Major news is that the Great Experiment will be tried this Christmas . . . a grand moment in history. Taishi will be taking his first flight . . . alone. I could go back and check the records, but it seems to me that the little tyke has probably flown on more airplanes in his tiny ten-year span than I had when his age . . . okay, maybe a few less flights but probably a lot more miles. Back then, to get from Calcutta to California, even in a 707, you had about six stops just to refuel. That's why I can say with all honesty that I've been to Baghdad, Karachi, Dhaka, Istanbul and by gum, Josef Tito's Belgrade -- I just didn't get off the plane at some of them (I was afraid in Baghdad, but only of Ali Baba and his 40 thieves, not Saddam and his 10,000 thieves).

But yes, this will be his first, all alone. It should be a no-brainer. It's from Osaka-Kansai to SFO direct and there will be a lot of meet-and-greeting, but it damn near saves me $4000 if you count hotel, meals and transportation, a very welcome harbinger of the future -- to get to Montreal it will only be for me to fly to Seattle or Vancouver -- Tai-chan will be doing the heavy lifting. As far as how I'm going to fare going all the way to the west coast and come back on the same day -- with stops it's still around a 9 - 10-hour jaunt -- but it saves so much unimaginable time and money.

And it will be the first time I've been back to California in almost three years. I'm sure my family won't be too thrilled to see me but they're slavering to see Tai-chan.

Let's just hope I survive the jaunt on September 10 to Japan and back . . . my sister, who works as a supervisor for Homeland Security, ominously warned me that I'd better get my shit wired tight because there's a small, uh, anniversary right around thereabouts. I am desperately hoping that I will be seeing the backside of Japan for, like, maybe 50 years or so. To tell the truth, I really have no idea what toll these trips to Japan and back for the past 8-odd years have taken on me -- let's just say that it's been a continual circle of Life Interrupted, with plans continually being put on hold and getting wrenched askew just when I've gotten back into something of a routine.

I just don't know how people who work on ships for months away from their homes and family do it -- I'd go berserk. It would be either home and family or ship -- I couldn't do both.

Ships. Now I remember why I'm here tonight. You know by now that I'm pretty much apolitical -- I just tune out when the word "election" comes onto the scene in any format and I couldn't give a flying F who's in power -- liberals, democrats, republican liberals, licentiotarians, totalitarians, whatever. Same guys, different spots.

So you can imagine that I'm the same way about religion -- same guys, same spots. I really couldn't give an f-bomb (see how bizarrely restrained I'm being today, Flock? I guess it's Expletive Deleted Day for some inexplicable reason). But when the twain meet, I get seriously annoyed.

Especially when the hypocrisy level rises above the usual normal -- high. Before I met Brigitte, who's Jewish, I was basically just merely annoyed at both religions/politics -- Judaism, Islam. I just basically thought about it like, why can't you guys both just shut up and get along?

But being aware of Israel, as opposed of just Judaism, and a renewed look at the Holocaust, has led me to very different conclusions. I won't go into it in any great detail, but, as an ad in the NY Times said today (sorry, tried to get a link but you'll find it), where are the flotillas to Syria? And it goes on to list a large number, most of but not all, Islamic-run countries whose populaces live under a litany of horrors ranging from mere starvation to state-sponsored mass murder, torture and imprisonment, and it struck me that where's all the hoopla given to that joke of those lunatic-fringe Flotilla to Gaza people when it comes to, say, Libya?

This time there's no Bush demon, no WMDs, practically no American and absolutely no Israeli involvement, yet where's the indignation? The intervention of oil-rich pseudo-theocracies such as Saudi Arabia, Arab Emirates, Dubai yada yada, coming to the aid of their oppressed brethren? It appears they have little, if anything to say as they build their absurd palaces in the desert, ski resorts in Dubai on the backs of semi-enslaved immigrant workers to do the grunt work -- where are they?

Meanwhile the population of Libya, themselves wholly enslaved for 40 years, fight a desperate battle to wrest power from a cartoon dictator with nothing but extremely low-key NATO intercession, a battle that's been fought and won in Egypt and Tunisia but at great human expense -- but WHERE ARE the marching chanters, the hordes of Israel demonisers that launch mass protests every time Israel feels it necessary to defend itself from brazen attacks from yet another lunatic terrorist group that actually, amazingly, got itself ELECTED (well, Bush did too -- twice, so there's no surprise at the level of human microcephalic tendencies) . . . where ARE these people?? Huh? There's just a VAST SILENCE that comes from the shame of feelings of complicity -- the un-statements from anyone in the Arab world with even a shred of credibility -- and, after doing the adding, that adds up to a big fat ZERO. That's all.

Think about it. When was the last time you read or heard the words "Saudi Arabian advances in science . . ." "Dubai's medical wizardry results in new aids for the developmentally disabled . . . " "Bahrain sends team of volunteer doctors to quake-ravaged . . ."

Huh?

I rest my case. Cases. Both upper and lower.

The Arab world's latest contribution to Humanity

End note: Saudi Arabians in space? Iranian arctic explorers? Jordanian pioneering robot designers? Saudi Arabian woman ANYTHING? Iranian sustainable energy projects? Iranian ANYTHING?

Hello!!!??? Anybody home???????

Can you say "Fifteenth century?" Better yet, can you say "Bombed back into the fifteenth century, where they all desperately want to be"?

I know you can. I'll even hold your hand while you say it.

Final, really final note: I think this explains it in visual terms so much better than I ever could in writing. Go to this page and look at the map. Then click the magnification tool again and again until you see the tiny blue country buried in a sea of red. That's Israel. This map simply signifies countries that trade. But in reality it means how "developed" countries are. How civilized. You can see at a glance that most of the countries in red are simply organized anarchic groups of humanity that to a larger or lesser degree all share the honor of having populations of humanity who have very much yet the so-called level of "civilization" that the countries in blue do.

But isn't it poignant? That you have to click, click and click again to find this tiny country in a veritable morass of instability to find Israel? What, now you say there's some Wikipedia conspiracy to colour Israel blue? I find it frankly incredible that so few people in such a small country have found the wherewithal not only to survive, mostly as a mass of immigrants that heretofore had nothing in common but a label: "Jew" -- and manage to make it work, but not just work; to survive in an incredibly hostile world, whose nearest neighbours want only to see it erased from the face of the Earth.

I swear, this little picture makes my case so well that I will have no more to say on the subject. For now.

NEXT DAY: Stop the Presses! Somebody IS helping the Libyans!!!!

Possibilities of Duck and Cover

2011-08-21T06:13:00.000-07:00

Did you know, my faithful, endearingly loyal flock, none of whom would nevertheless go down to the corner store and get me dishwashing liquid this morning so I'm having to do it NAKED with no soap at all, (not ME naked, ya stupids, da DISHIS) that there is nothing I could do to protect you from an asteroid about the size of Pessamquot (big) slamming into Earth, eliminating 99.6% of all Terran species extant today and causing an Ice Age that will last 10,000 years?

Now, Flock, do you realise I am 100% not kidding?

Number one, there are only about eight people on earth looking for one of these. Number two, if they somehow saw them, they'd have about 0.08 seconds to warn the cities to all evacuate and take up safe shelter in the surrounding hills. Number three, they'd probably be right under it. It would be the size of Pessamquot, a place I am making up only because you know it is bigger than Manhattan and I didn't want to scare you.

This would make Tsar Bomba look like the effluvium of a water sprite, which is actually very, very small.

Mars, the Moon and all our small accompanying planets in this solar system would cringe, mumbling to themselves "Glad that wasn't me!"

Hey look, if the largest planet in our solar system can suck it up bravely, so can we!

Just lettin' ya know, flock.

I Won "America Hasn't Got Talent"!

2011-08-21T05:33:00.000-07:00

Yes! At this show in Padilla, Washington (no the stage did not blow down silly) I won the entire show. That's me, 18th from the left, after losing to the my second-last winner.

I haven't got talent, all right, I haven't got LOTS of talent! Me getting the award . . . well, the stage blew over and it was cancelled.

A Dream For You

2011-08-20T10:44:00.000-07:00

I Want to Organize a Flash Mob with this Blog

2011-08-20T06:36:00.000-07:00

Look, if you do it RIGHT we can FREAK 'EM OUT. Let's all assemble at the Second Cup on the corner of Queen Mary and Decelles, like in TWENTY MINUTES.

We'll ALL PRETEND WE DON'T KNOW EACH OTHER, we'll ORDER A LIME FRAPPUCCINO and we'll all sit AT DIFFERENT TABLES FOR EXACTLY 8 MINUTES studying on our laptops.

Then we'll all get up at exactly the same time, say "MERCI" to the baristas in chorus and LEAVE without having touched our Frappuccinos!

Won't that be AWESOME. SEE YOU THERE!!!*

*Then we'll go rob St. Joseph's Oratory

Why They Lost the War

2011-08-17T09:26:00.000-07:00

Because they were so DUMB.

Picture of the Day

2011-08-17T09:07:00.000-07:00

This is almost Rembrandt like . . .