While you're watching the Olympics

 

Health food stores are a kind of niche market.  They give off a kind of eco-hippy vibe and  I don't think they can always sustain themselves businesswise as several have closed in my County of Westchester, NY alone.  They're great if you're looking for a non-fluoride toothpaste or aluminum-free solutions to your armpit funk but not so great for everyday basic grocery shopping imo.  Their tea tree oil mouthwash did help me with a bad case of gingivitis though but I still want my Little Debbies.

I never understood veganism.  I get vegetarianism but what do vegans have against eggs and milk exactly?  Eat a vegan cake or cookie and it's full of oil.  Never understood how it took off as a concept and reached the status of trendy to the point of vegan restaurants and cookbooks.  Pity the poor kid being thrown a birthday party by vegan parents.

Lastly I wouldn't trust the bathroom tissue in these organic markets.

Ronald McDonald vs. Cheech & Chong

Some issues have come up in a couple of recent posts namely that eating at McDonald's is extremely bad for your health but pot is somehow ok. In the following 3 month experiment which group do you think will come out on top in terms of general overall health? The first group will eat what they consider to be a healthy diet, work out at the gym and all that good stuff but they'll smoke a couple of joints a day 'cause that's what they do. The second group will eat at McDonald's everyday, just once daily is enough and it doesn't have to be a hamburger and a soda. They can go for the healthier options on the menu like the salads, the wraps, the yogurt parfaits and a bottle of spring. I believe they even have some apple thing. So this group does that but they're not into pot and won't smoke it and they can jog too just like the first group. OK so at the end of the 3 month period who has damaged their health more and who will be happier? I once knew a guy who was really into his health, kept detailed charts of his cholesterol levels, plotted this and plotted that on graphs and reports but was a real pothead and was always devising new ways of toking like making a funnel out of Reynold's aluminum foil which I would think your fingers would get hot. He also unplugged all his appliances like the tv before leaving home for the day because he explained there's the trickle-suck effect of the plug simply being in the outlet and even that uses juice. What I want to know is at what point in time do you turn into Howard Hughes?

Pope Benedict resigns

His was a kind of quiet papacy in the eclipse you could say of the charismatic and saintly John Paul II and his grand and long mark on history.  I was not really surprised to learn of Benedict's leaving the papal office at the end of this month, he's up there in years and has had health issues so now the attention turns to possible successors, papabile.  Former Vatican Secretary of State Angelo Cardinal Sodano is no good, he suppressed alot of stuff on Fatima.  Same with the current Sec'y of State Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone.  Re the Third Prophecy the BVM had said to Lucia: "Look my child don't be surprised if, at a certain moment, a certain diabolical disorientation affects the best of minds, a disequilibrium so that they no longer judge according to the voice of my Son and of Peter."  Dolan is a long shot for the job but I think he would enjoy it for no other reason than that fine Vatican cuisine and impressive team of professional chefs.  I picture him for starters with a nice draught of abbey ale in the papal den perusing the New York sports pages and that husky laugh of his when he gets a visitor.  Incidentally if you're ever on Jeopardy and get asked this question they do have a team of what are called tastetesters whose sole job is to sample the food cooked for the pope on the offchance it may be poisoned, a kind of gustatory secret service.  Betcha didn't know that, you get the occasional nugget here.  My personal favorite is the Cardinal from Nigeria Francis Arinze who's been around the Vatican for awhile most lately as Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.  He was a chief advisor to JP2, he knows the players, he's conservative and we've already had a Pole to break the long line of Italian popes and so I think for many different reasons one from Africa would be ideal.  Benedict, now Ratzinger again? will probably go back to writing books, tweeting and playing with his mobile device.  My favorite newspaper headline is from today's New York Post, "Pope Gives God 2 Weeks Notice."

Samuel Jackson should just STFU!

Rumor has it that if Obama loses he'll become the head of the European Union and when you stop to think about it it makes sense although Bill Clinton at one point was supposed to become the head of the UN.  Slash 'n' burn capitalism, Romneyism vs. Obamanomics.  All things considered I kinda prefer the free markets although not in a total Randian sense.  Hey did you hear about the October Surprise?  According to Alex Jones there's military intel out there that something is gonna happen next month to help Obama win the election.  I was talking to my friend about this yesterday and said I doubt this as things are not going well for him in the Middle East right now and I doubt Jones ever wakes up in the morning and has a normal day of thinking.  Don't believe the media and all the polls out there, alot of folks are saying don't be swayed and just Vote for Romney.  I'm wondering if soapie is a prepper for when the World Economy totally collapses like in the not too distant future.  I don't know if you've ever talked to a prepper or those who at least are considering prepping but they're pretty annoying.  You know folks who stock up on the canned goods and jugs of Poland Spring and go to Eastern Mountain Sports for those wonderful packages of freeze-dried beef stroganoff and lasagna.  Gotta build a cabin in the woods right now and take the family there even if they don't wanna go and think I'm nutz and while we're at it let's get some of those water purification tablets too.  Anyone watch The Hunger Games yet? didn't think so but if I could articulate a principle here it is that the more a government grows the less benevolent it becomes, think about that Mr. Miller, BB.  I think the nub of Liberalism can be defined as you can kill a fetus but can't have a Big Gulp, pro-choice in one narrow sexual zone or band and fascism spraying off in all the other directions.  There are 50 States in the Union so why does every election apparently hinge on what Ohioans want?  Look the rest of us won't vote we'll just let the State of Ohio decide things.  Obama as head of the EU, you heard it here first:) 

50 Shades of Crap

It's kind of a slow blogging cycle at least for me, nothing I could latch onto of late.  I mean yeah Sandra Fluke introduced Obama at some political function, he still seems to be milking that one and I was reading in my Catholic New York that he and Romney are gonna speak at the annual Al Smith Dinner in NY and...but hey wait a minute didn't his HHS Dept. and Sebelius just cause endless grief for the RC Church and other religious institutions? yeah a few lame jokes will smooth that over.  Maybe he'll even tell a birth-control joke or two, who knows?  Then I see the guy I'm actually gonna vote for, Romney, is actually a murderer according to some Super-PAC and this is just the longest hottest most horrible miserable summer for me in a while.  Getting attacked by mosquitoes practically on a daily basis even in my sleep and then there's the Fishbowl of Work to deal with.  Look folks are bored at work, I get it and maybe you have a temporary health issue or whatever and it makes for fodder and no it's not your paranoid vibe at work again, they really are talking about you and everybody else for that matter.  If I were in charge I'd make sure everybody has enough work to do.  New manager has a habit of sometimes leaving old food in the showcase like pulled pork so I talked about it with a co-worker and his attitude was give the guy a chance (the fruit of liberalism?), didn't seem to get my point like I was being a meanie.  Now I'm all for giving people chances, God knows I wouldn't be perfect in that role either and I'm not a prick but at what point is giving somebody a chance a lowering of standards, defining deviancy down?  I see Costco won't carry Joan Rivers' new book so she chained herself to a shopping cart and bellowed into a bullhorn.  Kristen Stewart/Rob Pattinson...you see the material I got to work with? but I'll be honest I kinda follow this stuff and I'm definitely on his side.  There was a new massacre at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, they're not Muslims but they look like them and their faith system is very googleable.  I checked my e-mail just now and see I got like a hundred fresh comments, dunno what everyone is talkin' about I gotta go see.  Time for a fresh post, carry it on over here if you like.  I'll put the coffee on and get the crullers rockin'.  Had a couple of Jamaican beef patties last night, they're good and all but left a kind of slight aftereffect.  It's definitely time to plan the next vacation:)

Another drummed up controversy - Chick-fil-A

Chick-fil-A, maybe I need to get out more and stop reading my field guides but I never heard of the place.  Don't recall them around these parts and sorry I spent so long on the gun post 'cause I didn't have anything else but this is kinda right up the alley.  Chick-fil-A, 1,608 chicken restaurants across the country whose president is Dan Cathy some Christian guy opposed to gay marriage.  All told his chain rakes in more than $4 billion a year and they say they run their business on Christian principles and teach their employees to do the same.  Not sure what this means exactly, are their workers forbidden to gossip and use cuss words but to each his own.  So a new report from the LGBT group Equality Matters says Chick-fil-A gave more than $3 million to Christian groups opposing the gay agenda and the timeframe here is from 2003-09.  In 2010 according to the report the company gave about a cool $2 mil to such causes.

SO??????

Did Dan come in with his boyfriend and did they refuse to serve them?  You know the thought occured that indeed Dan can come in with his boyfriend and they could order a nice chicken-lickin' sandwich or two and take it home later and incorporate it into a sex act.  UMMM the boycott thing is cool and if it bothers you that much SO DON'T EAT THERE!  Kraft not that long ago posted a photo of a new Oreo cookie with a nice rainbow filling inside, didn't know that, I looked it up.  JC Penney recently hired Ellen DeGeneris as its spokesperson before dehiring her so it cuts both ways and I'm like I don't care if DeGeneris is JC's spokeswoman and it's fine that the chicken company supports the traditional family but the Oreo thing I don't think is good for your diet.  Look no laws were broken in any of these cases and I'm labeling this under the gay agenda, yes the gay agenda.  As far as I'm concerned everyone can have a POV on the ole Hershey Highway, you can't force me to drive on it just like I can't tell you not to take that route.  Seems the LGBTers want you right there in the room with Ranger Rick getting right on up in there and anything short of clapping and applause will get you in trouble with the Nanny State.  That last point is a metaphorical one of course but look folks are entitled to each their own ickiness.  All I knows is that when you're driving along and you pass a Kennedy Fried Chicken you're in the ghetto:)

The real problem with Higher Education

Sometimes conservatives overly misdiagnose the Problem.  For instance you'd think there was a veritable epidemic of bad teachers in the NYC public schools system and for this reason teacher ratings and evaluations need to be made public not tomorrow but NOW.  Conservatives love this particular bandwagon but I say it's the kids, home-training.  With Higher Education, colleges and universities conservatives say the problem is liberal bias.  Well yeah there's some of that, having two years of college under my belt you could sense it from time to time but I really don't care, whatever floats your boat.  You have a political leaning well if the students know where you're coming from I don't see the problem but the real problem in a nutshell is that colleges and universities make you take courses you're never gonna use in Life.  Went to that Catholic institution for two years and they made us take an advanced math class so this older white-haired priest is writing calculus equations on the board, really breezing along with his chalk and I'm like what in hell? I'm never gonna use this in my day-to-day.  Then we had to go to the college bookstore on the corner of course and buy our own textbooks which cost a small fortune and I remember thinking back then in high school the class that just made it to the next grade just passed their books down to the next generation of students gratis.  What a racket!  One of my younger male managers going back a few years said after high school he just wanted to dive right into the workforce, make money and so he went with chefing and avoided the whole higher education experience.  Practical skills you learn by actually doing, how to make money, interacting with people and customers and learning new trades on the spot.  Better for the economy.  I'm glad to see a few conservatives like Maggie Gallagher more or less put down the whole college experience as a serious waste of time, you're gonna spend years paying back that student loan and what exactly are you gonna do with that advanced art or history degree anyway?  Education is one of the most controversial issues in this country, everyone has an opinion.  I say kids don't need to be taught how to masturbate just how to make the dinars:)

What does OWS & ice-fishing have in common?

Not much.  I lost alot of respect for them when they stopped protesting throughout the winter months.  Sure some judge told them they can't camp out in Zuccotti Park anymore but what was it? by late December or early January they weren't even in the news anymore probably replaced by some Kardashian crap and the latest political scandal.  Lost alot of steam imo by hibernating like this, even the 'possum risks ice-frost every now and then to get a bite to eat.  The brave May Day protests to shut down work, schools and banks, expect more brave protests throughout the summer months, probably into the fall as well.  This blogpost is not about whether you agree or disagree with them, you probably don't and will comment as you see fit but real protesters protest in whatever kind of weather.  12 degress in the middle of January, you're out there with your frozen snot and a chapped ass, a rumbling belly because you're body expelled all that fine OWS cuisine and you have to use the Port-o-San at least 10X because you had a couple cups 'o' joe when you woke up in the morning, now that's Democracy in action and I can respect that politics be damned!  They really need to watch reels of those old-time black civil-rights protesters from the 60's getting pushed back by fire hoses and bitten by German Sheperds these hippy/yuppie hybrid malcontents.  Bunch 'o' pussies, meteorological cowards.  They don't make protesters like they used to:)

The Giggles Layaway Plan or should the Gov't subsidize sex toys 'n' gadgetz?

Now there be some poor folk out there who can't afford some of the finer Giggles products or any Giggles products for that matter, they work hard all day for chump change and so some dumpy frumpy middle-aged housewife with an alcoholic husband is caught filching a dildo and winds up on some poster called Loser of the Month with her name and where she's from for all to see. The sex'chal needs of the Poor, they're not being met. IF there is this overriding societal need out there to prevent conception at all costs, the Senate just ko'd some conscience bill put up by the stuffy Republicans to cancel out Obama's contraceptive mandate, then by the same standard the sex act itself needs to be enhanced, better enjoyed and performed for overall physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. You cannot have one w/o the other, pills and other birth-control devices without the other sexual accoutrements that normally go into a fun and romantic evening. It's time to finally get Government out of the bedroom once and for all by subsidizing sex toys and marital aids, along with the free pills for women insurance can now cover at no rise in premiums of course the other goodies. K-Y is important of course, just saw a commercial for this fine product on primetime mainstream television no less just the other day. Anal beads, butt plugs, masturbation sleeves, cock rings and so on through the catalogue and so as not to discriminate against our gay friends and co-workers the Jelly Fist should be covered at no extra cost. It's enlightened, it's progressive and it just makes good sense. Now this is sure to create a firestorm, a brouhaha, a controversy with a capital C and it's only shocking because the idea is so new. Of course when the first few bills come up it will quickly break down into predictable party lines with the Democrats taking the more permissive position as they can always be counted on to do and the pasty Republicans can then be painted as a club of mostly repressed Puritans, mostly male and white at that, anti-poor folk and anti-the women. What they really want is a Theocracy. By opposing the sex-toy mandate they just want the good ole guv'ment more in your bedroom than ever. Let's get it out of the bedroom and into the kitchen where it belongs:)

New Year's Resolutions

I've none, I already lost the weight. They say most folks gain a few pounds over the holidays. Well for me the way I combat this is I took a long walk the day before and on Christmas Day itself I ate very well of the main course offered and then some traditional desserts and no I didn't hold anything back but I didn't eat anything before this or after this for the rest of the day but it lasted me the whole day and into the night. Scotch, now there's a tricky potion. Got some Dalmore as a gift and later on that night with nothing on the TV I got bored, depressed and a tad irritable all at the same time thinking about work the next day. So I was all set on my day off this fine Tuesday to go to Balducci's the Food Lover's Market in the lovely and very Bronxville-esque town of Ridgefield CT and was doing some online research just now about getting there from the scenic Merritt Parkway when lo and behold they closed down! another victim of the bad economy and most of the stores and places I've become accustomed to shop over the years have likewise closed down. Rewatched Easy Rider few days back and the classic scene where the two bikers go to New Orleans and hitch up with two gals one played by Toni Basil and later drop acid and are wandering through some cemetery on some pretty bad trips. There's something weirdly hilarious about the scene and just heard on the news that moviegoing this year is down about $500 million from last year and all sorts of reasons were given but how 'bout most movies suck these days, they don't make 'em like they used to. I don't know what to do with myself today but might hit some Asian store later, the Ridgefield arc of my day is lost. Back to the regular sucky non-holiday music on the radio, don't remember a time in my life when music sucked so much and this is bad for long trips which I am wont to do. Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas, I've no problem just don't make me feel guilty if I go with Merry Christmas. So where are Jay-Z and Fitty's special holiday albums? (suggested song titles: Silent Night Deadly Night, Frosty the Blowman). This is what happens when you pigeonhole yourself in the bad, folks will laugh if you do something nice for a change and I read somewhere Fitty dropped a whole boatload of pounds going on some liquid diet so he could play some cancer survivor in a movie, might be interesting. Happy Whatever:)

Well hell it's a job but still

Pureeing the topics here but let's get back to retail for a minute. One of my friends who works at the supermarket end of things is a kind of source for scuttlebutt that's happening in that sector of the economy. You remember KRONOS don't you? (and btw don't tell me that's just a phonetic version of "chronology" or something), now add to this the growing field of mystery shoppers. Now I don't know what the going rate for them is but basically they pretend to be your average casual shopper, they come in and then after they leave the store or place of business they grade how well each department did in terms of whatever the Company deems important (e.g. suggestive selling, "how are you today?" etc.). Now I realize the economy is bad but would you do this for even a temporary living? get other workers in trouble really who are just trying to get by? Word on the street is some major supermarket chains will even go to the lengths of finding out which employee was lacking and maybe even write him/her up. This kind of gangsterism is not good for morale imo and stuff like this tends to happen when a company is not doing well, they're looking for answers and don't know what to do so they come up with crap like this. Truthfully I'd rather be unemployed than rat people out to pay my rent and once they make use of mystery shoppers the company seems to become practically obsessed with the topic like nothing else matters (e.g. low prices, a safe work environment). BTW checked out the new Gordon Ramsay culinary collection yesterday at K-Mart, not bad especially the digital 12-Cup coffeemaker:)

Bad teachers or just bad kids?

I was never that caught up in the whole education debate in this country, not that I don't care but in the conservative worldview if I understand it correctly and I think I do there are an awful lot of bad teachers in the public schools and so if we just got rid of teacher tenure everything would be hunky-dory. In fact this is one issue they really get their dander up about, endless columns to the point where I just cruise them and turn the page but dunno man, maybe the problem is with the Kids. In our discussion of utterly boring and meaningless jobs Saty had this to say: "Quite a lot of jobs could be made more interesting by the motivation and willingness of the person doing it to make it more interesting." Just substitute the word class for jobs and student instead of person and the same point applies to education. What's a teacher to do with a class full of asshole kids, fidgety brats who won't sit still and aren't willing to learn? I started out very early in the public school system but then my folks switched me over to private but out of all those years I don't really recall too many truly bad teachers. Maybe a few were too boring and dry for my tastes and could have been better but to hear conservatives tell the tale......Mayor Bloomberg's multimillion dollar Black and Latino Initiative in NYC has as a key component teaching the young'ens all about Sex, rubber instructions, things like that but if I may borrow from the soapster here it is not even the primary obligation of the State to educate your kid. It certainly isn't to teach them something Mom and Dad should be teaching them anyway and I say teach 'em a trade, how to make money, how to get a job. How is learning about Mike and Fred adopting a kid gonna pay the bills down the road? Now Mayor Bloomberg somehow got the law changed in the City so he could run for a third term and we get this stuff for his finale and pedestrian plazas where cars used to be and bike lanes nobody really uses and he even wants to have food grade inspections for New York's trademark fast food vendors because in his words if he's buying a hot dog he wants to know whether the guy washed his hands first. Maybe you want one of those giant salted pretzels and Moussa just took a dump. I just shut my mind off to it:)

The Pearl Harbor Bias

For purposes of the following discussion Asian means Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Thai and all the rest (folks don't know the difference) but the thesis of the thread is the existence of what I call the Pearl Harbor Bias. Anyways so I'm watching an episode from the second season of Masterchef a few nights ago. This is kinda the American Idol of amateur chefs from around the country who get to show judges Gordon Ramsay, Graham Elliot and Joe Bastianich their culinary skills. So early on in the competition you have to present one of your signature dishes and so it's the young Asian guy's turn and even the judges agreed his crab dish was absolutely delectable, light and the purity of it all but only Joe thought he had potential and the other two simply eliminated him. Some picayune, nitpicking criticism that it wasn't a main dish or something. OK so in the wake of the tragic Japanese tsunami my parish never even took up a collection for the victims unless I missed something or even mentioned it in their prayer intentions at Mass. Now on the workfront we usually have some type of trendy collection box going especially when such an apocalyptic disaster occurs but with this thing straight out of the Bible absolutely NOTHING and I mean nothing. Yeah the usual cancer and Jerry's Kids stuff, pink ribbons and March of Dimes, oh that's K-Mart. Oh yeah some bakery manager who I haven't seen in quite some time came in yesterday and I said hi and she said "what happened to you, are you anorexic?" Always a plain-spoken bitch but mathematically at 195 lbs. and exercising regulary with the chest pull resister I bought at Modell's her theory doesn't work out and I said my doctor gave me my ideal weight range and I reached it, I mean take it up with him. I'm digressing but the point is a bunch of Japs can be swept out to sea and folks express more concern that I'm healthier now (funny how they don't seem to notice it when you're overweight). I've long ago come to the conclusion Society is irretrievably weird. Getting back to the Asian crab guy on Masterchef he was standing there all proud and sure of himself but then it was like he was relegated to culinary eternal damnation or something. Joe said the other two were making a mistake but it was like Gordon and Graham saw absolutely no potential in the guy and it was only his first signature dish and yet they'll pass in some black mama from Georgia or Mississippi who talked sweet and threw something together. You know they've had a bad run of it lately what with the tour bus full of Asian gamblers coming back from Mohegan Sun in Connecticut overturning when it reached the Bronx, one half-expects to turn on CNN only to find a jetliner full of Koreans flying into some erupting volcano somewhere but you'd think they could get a little respect in the culinary world:)

Politics is alot like cooking

Everyone thinks their way is the way.

and protect us from all anxiety

One of my favorite lines in the whole Mass occurs around the time of the consecration when the priest says "and protect us from all anxiety." It's an unusual line in that it's not overtly religious in the sense of save us from the fires of hell and that sort of thing, hell theology itself causes anxiety and for me the thing right now is this free-floating anxiety out there. Had a pretty good blast of Ole Man Winter day after Christmas and so folks hit the food stores before in droves, pounded the area delis pretty hard and so that's the thing with anxiety, it's hard to define but in your head when mixed with a healthy dose of imagination it takes on distorted dimensions. Now I'm sure a few people actually needed food but I think in many people's minds they had visions of being homebound for a week slowly starving to death. Never quite got this but anyway I was scheduled to work the night shift yesterday but after a couple hours shoveling out my car made what I thought was a very educated decision on my part to just call work and tell 'em I'm not coming in. The plow came through very late in the day as I live on one of those side roads on top of a hill and the tipping point for me was that in my neighborhood it's very hard to find a space at night in such situations and so the co-mgr. picks up the phone and you always get this, it's like from a playbook or something -- Me: "There are too many problems in my neighborhood (yada yada)..." Him (tooting his own horn): "We all have problems but I made it in" but I remained firm and he hung up. Bears mentioning he's a self-described Republican and I'm telling you your average Republican is not good on labor issues, is not on the side of the worker which is why we need a kind of fusion politics these days, recognize the shortcomings of whatever political side we fall down on and combine the best ideas from both although I do realize this deviates from the enemies' camp approach and is problematic for many who seem to revel in a kind of political trench warfare. Dad became sick right before Christmas so nobody was gonna visit there, kids might get sick and so all things considered it was definitely one of those off-center holidays. Talked to my best bud last night and we really don't critique each other about how we may fall short in the friendship department, that ain't true blue and he deals with the same shit at his job and so we rapped about that. It takes too much energy to hate but I'm telling you civil service people have it good, too many flakes falling from the sky and they just head on home, no conservative boss trying to lay a guilt trip on you either. I'm not big on New Year's Resolutions, never was and if you're gonna do something no better time like the Present and so while most people vow to lose weight after the Holidays been there done that and no I didn't lose those last nine pounds all in one week, got close and decided to round it off and today I'm at that ideal weight I've talked about but that's probably because I shoveled so much of the white stuff yesterday. Truth be told I know this correction guard and he used to be a husky guy until I went to a party one day and barely recognized him, thought he had the cancer or something but he simply decided to lose the pounds although imo it's better in his line of work the way he was. OK so last post before the New Year's and let's stop causing each other anxiety, Life's too short anyway. Adopt an animal, chill back and if someone gets offended because you refuse to marry your job that's their problem. Me? my main thing today is trying to find a use for anchovies:)

Zesty swordfish with roasted asparagus

I love to experiment while cooking. You're not being judged on Master Chef on technical presentation, you're in your own private kitchen fulfilling the #1 Rule of Cooking which a Jamaican chef explained to me once and that is whatever pleases your palate. Cooking, dunno know why but it's alot like politics - My way of cooking is The way - when just give me something good to eat, something that sticks to my ribs. Anyway bought a swordfish steak last week and here's what I did:

Diced up a small tomato, 1/2 a white onion and a jalapeno, all small dice (on Master Chef they'd have to be perfect squares but I ain't into the ocd style of cooking). Put them in a small bowl and added some olive oil and mixed it up. Drizzled everything on top of the swordfish and then some bread crumbs and even some Parmesan (dunno if Joe Bastianich would approve but fuck him), the whole idea being to give it that toasted appearance. Got my oven preheated to 400 (don't tell anyone but it was actually a toaster oven) and then put the steak on a foil tray. OK oven ready and so on another tray just below that was my asparagus which was drizzled with some olive oil, salt & peppa and a freshly crushed garlic clove. I prefer freshly crushed garlic to the bottled kind but whatever. So I'm watching the thing for about, oh I don't know 10 or 15 minutes, even used a small flashlight to see what's going on in there and towards the end just cranked that baby up to 450. Total time about 20, 22 minutes and put the bad boy on my plate with the asparagus kind of on each side. I actually think Gordon Ramsay would have liked it and the guy in the middle but Joe would have just taken a bite and walked away. You know I do my own thing in the kitchen and it rocked!! The cat outside even smelled it from all the way out there and came in and jumped up on the table. The things you can do with such modest equipment and it's good for you too. I didn't do anything radical like you see in some cookbooks and put a pineapple on top, chefs must be getting bored or something these days. Bon appetit!

Rigatoni Gorgonzola - a fine summer salad

Boil three boxes of Mezze Rigatoni (that's the smaller rigatoni). I like Barilla as it holds up well. Boil for 8-10 minutes or whatever the instructions call for. Personally I'm not into al dente but just go slightly past al dente, you certainly don't want your pasta overboiled and mushy. Cool the pasta off in a colander or strainer under cold running water. Now get yourself a nice big mixing bowl and add 2 or 3 cans of medium black pitted olives and 2 or 3 of those small containers of baby tomatoes you see in the produce department. Get yourself a nice red Vidalia onion but don't dice it, slice it up and throw it in. You should be able to find the gorgonzola cheese in crumble form in any of the finer delis at the cheese island. If they're out of gorgonzola your average blue cheese works perfectly fine as a substitute as it has a similar gustatory effect and they're all from the same family anyway. Make sure you put enough cheese in there. Put a decent amount of Italian dressing in the bowl, put on your latex or vinyl gloves and mix well. If it's your preference you can spritz on some dill weed.

Serves 3-5 (or one fat person)

The Smaller Gov't Test

by not voting.

Now let's say Bob Smith is a rock-ribbed all-American Republican so we all get on the Bob Smith Bandwagon, blog in his favor etc. Bob Smith is such a stud. Now here's the basic problem or dilemma for the libertarian -- whomever you pull the lever for in November, your local city councilman, your state guy or gal, your Senator or Representative in the Congress you are voting to put a legislator into office and what is the primary function of a legislator pray tell?? well it's not to repeal laws (that Barry Goldwater fantasy) but to pass them. Now if you're like me we have enough laws already, strike that if anything we have way too many. Got this brand new cast-iron pan at Bed, Bath & Beyond a few days ago, Emeril-Ware if I may plug that, and yesterday got that baby nice and hot and seared a couple of nice old salmon steaks in there and time comes when you stick a fork in that baby and say MG she's done! Same thing with our system of government or laws, the F'n thing is done, anything else is gilding the lily. So basically for your true libertarian voting for even a Republican makes absolutely no sense. Whether Democrat or Republican I'm voting for what? a lawmaker, now why would I do that? Now Beth just blogged that we are a nation of laws and they say that ignorance of the law is no excuse. Yes it is if you have too many of them. We've tried everything else, why not try the libertarian experiment?

The #1 Rule of Cooking

We're all aware of places people eat out that cut corners and if we aren't then Gordon Ramsay's "Kitchen Nightmares" has brought that home. You see it all the time, you'll walk into a supermarket let's say and see on the hot table some gangster meatloaf, some gangster spinach lasagna rolls that have already been in the packout section and are expiring that day, some overdone gangster chicken, gangster mac & cheese, gangster turkey burgers. So some hapless soul will get a little diarrhea, it ain't gonna kill you. You hope nobody will notice, it's Thuganomics but a really good chef friend of mine gave me an important piece of advice one day, he's a proud Culinary Institute of America grad and you could say it's the #1 Rule of Cooking -- If you're not willing to put it in your own mouth don't have somebody else put it in theirs.

That's what she said to me.

What if the Bilderbergers only talked about (......)?

So I'm watching Alex Jones' latest documentary last night, The Obama Deception and since my #1 Rule for anything is that it not be boring it passed the night very well. So if you don't already know the story of the Bilderbergers they're a group of about 125 people, not just millionaires but multibillionaires which seems to be the price of admission into this elite little club and they're among the most powerful and influential people in the world to put it mildly. So in the movie they're all driving up to have one of their infamous 2-day annual meetings at some Marriot or other and Alex Jones and a group of like-minded protestors are yelling and shouting at them using bullhorns and their hands, calling them a bunch of elitist criminals who want to enslave the entire planet under a dictatorial one-world government, who orchestrate and engineer entire socio/economic calamities to make their evil globalist agenda more palatable to the public-at-large but I had this thought. Let's say Alex Jones was able to infiltrate these ultra-secret meetings somehow, probably not him as he'd be recognized of course but let's say there was a way and the big confab was about to begin and ALL they talked about for two straight days was Sports...and Sex. The mouths on those gentlemen!!!

Alex Jones: "WTF!!!"

anyway there were some funny parts like legendary rapper KRS-One calling Obama "the New World Order with a black face" (a good one) and Professor Griff, founder of Public Enemy not buying into the whole thing either. The theme -- Our historic president Obama is just a puppet in the hands of the money-masters who really rule the world just like Bush was and before him just like Clinton was and before him...Now you probably won't be able to find it at your local Blockbuster but it's a good one, makes for an entertaining evening and what the hell else is on anyway?

The topic of faith has often come up here and the whole business of divine intervention (or lack thereof), where is God anyway? He hasn't been picking up His phone of late or answering His e-mail. So I had the day off today and decided to go on a nice long drive up the line to Brookfield, CT near New Milford. Destination: the Marian Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes where you write your prayer intentions down in a notebook. I'm spiritual anyway and it truly is a beautiful place with a lovely grotto and the Stations of the Cross so as a kind of test case I wrote a few intentions down private and personal to me (unless I was tailed by a Bilderberger), nothing earth-shattering or that dire but I wanna see if any or even a few of them come true (I realize the boss situation probably can't be helped). I'll keep you posted.

Food Review

A friend and I ate at a Red Lobster the other day and let's just say the place generally lives up to the commercials so my friend says later "Red Lobster is two notches above McDonald's but it's good." He'll often say things that make sense but you have to think about them a little. He came up with the phrase fear sleep as when you have a bad night sleeping, tossing and turning all night, maybe a little sweating, some urinary issues and weird dreams and you wake up and think there's a squirrel in your room and you go to work tired. Trouble is these days many people don't think before they speak. Went to the local library after work once and saw a guy I used to work with and he sees me and goes "what are you doing here?" What, I can't be here? I was in a laundromat once doing my clothes and one woman bumps into an old acquaintance and goes "what are you doing here?" and she goes "doing laundry?" This phrase "it's not the end of the world" as when someone goes off the deep end about something stupid, what do you say when it really is the End of the World As We Know It? & we'll leave it there for today. BTW just thought I'd let you know but Sean Hannity is the #1 trender right now, must've said something.