Useless Eating

"Do everything sensibly and in moderation. Fortunately, moderation means enjoying everything. "

In the OMFG category of gluttony, I present a Brad Edmonds round-up. Mr. Edmonds is an Anarcho-Capitalist of a particularly Southern bent, and a with penchant for Southern cuisine. He is anabashedly reactionary..."I give the homeless no credibility, and what they have to say is not worth two seconds’ of my time"; "It is not soft-hearted to give money to beggars, it is soft-brained and counter to the purposes of civilization"... But he remains a guilty pleasure, particularly on the subject of food - where my own taste runs toward the trogolydite. if nothing else, we can indulge in a bit of schadenfreude , considering that the internal organs of the American Right are likely to explode well before those of the crank-cuisine Left. But then, mine will probably go off right around the same time... After I'm done with this, I'm off to the Old Country Buffet...

In any case, here are a few of his more delightfully reactionary columns:

Breakfast

Bacon:
"Fry up some thick bacon, just a little underdone, then remove it from the pan and drain. In the same pan, fry broken pecan bits in butter just briefly. Put the bacon back in the pan and add entirely too much honey. Stir to cover, and serve. Cayenne pepper is a nice touch..."

Sauces

Butter:
"How to use fat to its best advantage? Two brilliant applications come to mind. As a thickener for soups, stews, sauces, and gumbo, make a roux: Put equal amounts of whole butter and flour into a sauté pan, on medium to medium-low heat. Have a beer handy (for general drinking), because making a roux takes time. Stir and cook until brown – the deeper the better. You have to cook out all the floury taste. Once it’s a bit brown, taste it (warning! It’s murderously hot – get some on a spoon, and cool it a whole lot before tasting). You’ll be amazed at the palate-swathing luxury of plain ol’ butter and flour together.

A second application: sautéing in clarified butter and olive oil. To clarify butter, melt a stick of it (unsalted, please) in the microwave in a transparent glass measuring cup. When it’s fully melted, you’ll see granules at the bottom, froth on top, and clear golden liquid – clarified butter – in between. That’s what you want; reach in there with a teaspoon to get it. It’s smoky, silky, and takes a lot of heat without burning compared to whole butter. Get a pan hot, and put in equal amounts of clarified butter and extra-virgin olive oil. Then throw in a diced onion. The aroma of the fats alone will make you think you’ve gone to heaven; adding the onion will make you think a great chef followed you there."

Sides

Greens:
"Here’s how to prepare greens properly: Finely dice a slice of bacon and a small onion. Sweat the bacon in a pot, then brown the bacon and onion in the bacon fat. Deglaze with white wine, white vinegar, and some hot sauce. Dissolve a pinch of salt and a good pinch of white sugar in the "pot liquor," then add fresh greens; grind some black pepper over the top. Cover, simmer, and stir frequently until the greens are as tender as you like them..."

Entrees

New York Strip with Bacon and Eggs:
"Find the best-looking New York Strip steaks you can. Broil to medium rare.
Dice a strip of bacon and render in a hot pan; remove the bacon and fry eggs to your preferred degree of doneness in the bacon fat. Place the bacon and eggs on the steaks. If you must, grate some extra-sharp cheddar cheese over the top. For a dipping sauce, reduce beef stock and red wine with a few splashes of balsamic vinegar; add plenty of butter, and a little corn starch to keep the butter from separating (trick: make a cold slurry of the cornstarch with red wine, and remove the sauce from the heat, add slowly while stirring; you’ll get a professional result).

Lobsters
Apparently lobsters scream when placed in boiling water...or at least they emit some kind of weird high pitched sound. This method seems more humane by comparison. The recipe includes grits...

Hamdog
The Hamdog is a hot dog wrapped in cheese then in a half-pound hamburger patty, then deep fried. The "dog" is then placed on half a hoagie bun and covered with chili. A thick slice of bacon and a fried egg are added on top; the dish is accompanied by French fries [and] some habanero hot sauce.

Dessert

What Else?
[A] Twinkie that had been dipped in egg wash, then in pulverized Cap’n Crunch cereal, then deep fried [and] squirted with artificial chocolate syrup.

Hey Mom it’s me

My Son in Iraq: I Know That It Happened Because I Heard It

by Teri Mackey

The day started pretty much like all of the others since my son had left for Iraq. I automatically woke up to surf the major news networks at 3 A.M. to see if anything newsworthy had happened in Baghdad while I had slept. It seemed as if it had been a quiet night and there were no new reports, so I turned off the television and went back to sleep. The phone rang and I woke up in a nanosecond, which was a trait that I had mastered since the first call I had gotten in the middle of the night from a war zone.

"Hey Mom it’s me." Something my son always said every time he called, but this time his voice sounded unusual. He had a really serious tone in his voice and the automatic gunfire in the background was loud and more constant than usual. My heart began to race and I took a deep breath.

The rest is here.

Know your place: Shut your face

Double Plus Ungood

"Daniel is a 'stop lossed' soldier serving for his second time in Iraq. Though forbidden to express himself freely, he has created this site to remind himself that he is more than just another of the king's horses. "

Daniel has been silenced, against his will. Here is his final post:

"I thank all of you who have been so supportive recently. I have never before received so much positive feedback, and it was very heart-warming to know that so many people out there care. Having said that, it breaks my heart to say that this will be my last post on this blog. I wish I could just stop there, but I can not. The following also needs to be said:

For the record, I am officially a supporter of the administration and of her policies. I am a proponent for the war against terror and I believe in the mission in Iraq. I understand my role in that mission, and I accept it. I understand that I signed the contract which makes stop loss legal, and I retract any statements I made in the past that contradict this one. Furthermore, I have the utmost confidence in the leadership of my chain of command, including (but not limited to) the president George Bush and the honorable secretary of defense Rumsfeld. If I have ever written anything on this site or on others that lead the reader to believe otherwise, please consider this a full and complete retraction.

I apologize for any misunderstandings that might understandably arise from this. Should you continue to have questions, please feel free to contact me through e-mail. I promise to respond personally to each, but it may take some time; my internet access has become restricted."


...and FYI from the Newspeak Dictionary

"double plus - A Prefix used to create the superlative form of an adjective or adverb. (i.e. - pluscold and doublepluscold meant, respectively, ‘very cold’ and ’superlatively cold’.

ungood - Bad. One of the rules of newspeak is that any word can be turned into its antonym by adding the prefix “un-”. This allowed the removal of repetitive words such as horrible, terrible, great, fantastic, and fabulous from the language"

A Screaming comes across the Sky

The illustrated gravity's rainbow.

Courtesy Spontaneous Arising


Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail
The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder
That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze
Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder
Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind
Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind
An’ the unpawned painter behind beyond his rightful time
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing

Frank Capers on Martin Scorsese on Bob Dylan

Metaphilm

Chesterton on the Issue of Our Time

"Incidentally, I must say I can bear witness to this queer taboo about tobacco. Of course numberless Americans smoke numberless cigars; a great many others eat cigars, which seems to me a more occult pleasure. But there does exist an extraordinary idea that ethics are involved in some way; and many who smoke really disapprove of smoking. I remember once receiving two American interviewers on the same afternoon; there was a box of cigars in front of me and I offered one to each in turn. Their reaction (as they would probably call it) was very curious to watch. The first journalist stiffened suddenly and silently and declined in a very cold voice. He could not have conveyed more plainly that I had attempted to corrupt an honorable man with a foul and infamous indulgence; as if I were the Old Man of the Mountain offering him hashish that would turn him into an assassin. The second reaction was even more remarkable. The second journalist first looked doubtful; then looked sly; then seemed to glance about him nervously, as if wondering whether we were alone, and then said with a sort of crestfallen and covert smile: `Well, Mr. Chesterton, I'm afraid I have the habit.'

As I also have the habit, and have never been able to imagine how it could be connected with morality or immorality, I confess that I plunged with him deeply into an immoral life. In the course of our conversation, I found he was otherwise perfectly sane. He was quite intelligent about economics or architecture; but his moral sense seemed to have entirely disappeared. He really thought it rather wicked to smoke. He had no `standard of abstract right or wrong'; in him it was not merely moribund; it was apparently dead. But anyhow, that is the point and that is the test. Nobody who has an abstract standard of right and wrong can possibly think it wrong to smoke a cigar. "



G.K. Chesterton "On American Morals"


And on the subject of Iraq - sorry - Chesterton, there is this ode to neo-cons thoughout time:

The English Graves

Were I a wandering citizen whose city is the world,
I would not weep for all that fell before the flags were furled;
I would not let one murmur mar the trumpets volleying forth
How God grew weary of the kings, and the cold hell in the north.
But we whose hearts are homing birds have heavier thoughts of home,
Though the great eagles burn with gold in Paris or in Rome,
Who stand beside our dead and stare, like seers at an eclipse,
At the riddle of the island tale and the twilight of the ships.

For these were simple men that loved with hands and feet and eyes,
Whose souls were humbled to the hills and narrowed to the skies,
The hundred little lands within one little land that lie,
Where Severn seeks the sunset isles or Sussex scales the sky.

And what is theirs, though banners blow on Warsaw risen again,
Or ancient laughter walks in gold through the vineyards of Lorraine,
Their dead are marked on English stones, their loves on English trees,
How little is the prize they win, how mean a coin for these --
How small a shrivelled laurel-leaf lies crumpled here and curled:
They died to save their country and they only saved the world.

G.K. Chesterton

If this doesn't get to you, then you'd better locate a cardiologist.

The Dude Abides

Jeff Dowd, one time member of the Seattle 7, now a film producer, is the model for the Big Lewbowski.

Also: the Lewbowski Fest.

Foreign Affairs

You do end up wondering. Why did Zaireans not dissolve, en masse, into gales of giggling every time Mobutu appeared with that idiotic leopardskin hat on? Why, when the stunted, stupid Ceausescu appeared before his people, was he able - for decades - to gaze upon intricately co-ordinated mosaic displays extolling his benevolence, instead of a chopping sea of "wanker" gestures? How did the Germans of the 1930s look at Hitler and fail to think, "Dude, you've got, like, a skull on your cap. What are you, 14?

The Terrible Taste of Dictators
Guardian UK


also, on a completely unrelated note, LSD may become legal in Russia... (Bruce Eisner's Vision Thing)

''The propagandist's purpose," wrote Aldous Huxley, "is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human." The British, who invented modern war propaganda and inspired Joseph Goebbels, were specialists in the field. At the height of the slaughter known as the First World War, the prime minister, David Lloyd George, confided to C P Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian: "If people really knew [the truth], the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don't know, and can't know."'


We Need to be Told (audio)

When journalists report propaganda instead of the truth, the consequences can be catastrophic - as one largely forgotten instance demonstrates.

John Pilger in the New Statesman


(John Pilger is also the creator of the film 'STEALING A NATION', which reveals the extraordinary story of the secret expulsion of the entire population of the Chagos islands in the Indian Ocean by successive British governments, so that the principal island, Diego Garcia, could be handed to the United States as a major military base. It is from this base that American aircraft have attacked Iraq and Afghanistan. )

Architectural Weirdness in Dubai

Pattern (Burj Al Arab - a hotel) Uwe R. Zimmer


Castles in the Sand

This week in the New Yorker Magazine, Ian Parker writes about the architectural weirdness of Dubai. In this slide show, he discusses the boom in the desert, accompanied by photographs by Robert Polidori.

Oh Canada

This is purportedly a transcript of a radio conversation of a US Naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. Radio conversation released by the Chief of Naval Operations 10 - 10 - 95.

Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.

Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.

Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.

Canadians: No. I say again you divert YOUR course.

Americans: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS LINCOLN, THE SECOND LARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES` ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE. MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP.

Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

Fun Facts to Know and Share

A follow-up to a previous post:

"It is against [the] background of global warming that a methane catastrophe will take place. A methane catastrophe consists of a sudden and massive release of continental margin methane within a short period of time. It is abrupt because it is initiated by a major submarine landslide, which can happen in a matter of hours, or by the venting of vast quantities of free and dissociated methane over a period of decades. These events take place in a geological eyeblink. Additional slumping and/or venting can continue for centuries to millennia.

The amount of methane that can be released is massive. Based upon a seafloor temperature increase of 5°C , it is estimated that about 2000 billion metric tons (Gt) of methane could be released (Hornbach, 2004). (That is one-fifth of the estimated 10,000 Gt of methane hydrate in the world's continental margins.) There is a simple way to put this amount of methane into perspective: it contains more than 2 1/2 times the amount of carbon as in the atmosphere. In addition, methane, it is essential to recall, is over twenty times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Though this methane would quickly be oxidized -- to carbon dioxide -- in the atmosphere, even its short-term presence would deliver a stunning jolt of heat to the planet. The derivative carbon dioxide would maintain that heat over the long-term.

A methane catastrophe, therefore, is an abrupt surge of greenhouse gas that could make mere carbon dioxide warming of the planet pale to insignificance. It can utterly overwhelm the natural heat regulatory system of the Earth, which operates in a much more gradual way, and on a much more protracted time scale. Its quantity is so massive that there is no remedial action that people will be able to take to mitigate it except in the most superficial way. Once a methane catastrophe begins, its consequences for the planet and its inhabitants, human and other, will be appalling, and we will be able to do nothing except wait it out.

We are on our way toward such a methane catastrophe."

KILLER IN OUR MIDST: Methane Catastrophes in Earth's Past and Near Future

Also... Equine Doo Wop

Demon Ducks of Doom

Over nine feet tall, Dromornis stirtoni roamed Central Australia more than 8 million years ago. Mihirungs, the common name for this group of extinct birds, is an Aboriginal word meaning giant emu. Mihirungs were a unique group of Australian flightless birds also known as “thunderbirds” and were derived from early waterfowl (ducks, geese, and swans).

(From FARK)

We Seceded Where Others Failed

Website for the Conch Republic - wherein citizen ($200.00) and diplomatic (starting at $900.00) passports are issued.

"The Conch Republic passport even saved one man's life in Guatemala when confronted by armed revolutionaries…"Americano no! Republica de la Concha". He was filled with shots of Tequila instead of shots from the Kalishnikovs."

Somewhat reminiscent of the Prinicipality of Sealand, who, unfortunately, do not issue passports.














What started my thinking about all of this was an announcement of this conference by a group of Vermont secessionists.

Be it resolved that the state of Vermont peacefully and democratically free itself from the United States of America and return to its natural status as an independent republic as it was between January 15, 1777 and March 4, 1791.


One may sign their petition here.

I love the smell of catastrophic climatic change in the morning...

Vast Release of Siberian Methane is a Threat to Climate

"The illusion of freedom [in America] will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater."

- Frank Zappa, musician and cultural iconoclast


"Habeas corpus, due process, the attorney-client privilege, no crime without intent, and prohibitions against torture and ex post facto laws are the protective features that shield the accused. These protective features are being removed by zealotry in the "war against terrorism."'

The Police State is Closer Than You Think
An Article by Paul Craig Roberts

1st Post

"Useless Eaters" is a term ascribed to Henry Kissinger, when speaking of people he'd rather not have around...

I can't find the actual quote, and maybe he never said it... but, What the Hell, this is a blog, not an encyclopedia. Its the sort of thing he would say...