Monday, August 17, 2015

So, You Want To Be A Blogger?

Here's a little blogging advice: don't. Your blog will take over your life. The beast has to be fed. Your achy-breaky heart can't tolerate the slightest decline in readership, so you must post! Today! And tomorrow! And the day after!

The garbage will start piling up in the kitchen because you don't have time to put it out. Look, you're blogging. Your spouse is mad at you because you're blogging and you're not doing your share around the house. By the time you've got 200 regular readers, you're headed for divorce. You're also about to lose your job, because you're always late to work stopping to snap those all important photos for your blog. That's the reason you're always late getting home too. The only one that's happy to see you when you're late is the dog.

Then there's the twitter notices to make sure your readers know about your new posts and you're attracting new readers. There are the spreadsheets to update, to track your pageviews, and how fast your blog is growing. You're obsessed.

Listen to me now, before it's too late.  Blogging will destroy your life. How do I do it? I would tell you, but now it's time for my medications.

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Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Never Say Yes, A Poem by M.W. Thomas

Jim Plunkett of Ewell’s Landing, Missouri said “Yes”
And ended up poling a piano across the lake on a homemade raft
To his brother’s cabin
When the raft and the piano sunk to the bottom
And he spit and gurgled and swore in a language Missourians know well
Then all he could think was “Oh, no!”

Miss Lulu Simon of National City, California said “Yes”
To a sailor at the Acey-Deucy Club after two Miller Lites, an umbrella drink,
And a shot of Cuervo
After a bouncy romp in the back seat of a ’72 Camaro with loose shocks
He broke her poor little drunk heart into five way-too-easy-pieces
And all she could think was “Oh, no!”

Let me explain you something:  Say “No” to “Yes”

Por ejemplo, Raul Montegon of San Juan, Puerto Rico said “Yes”
He would rid the city of all its feral cats (for a fee and a throw with an exclusive puta)
But the cats were smarter than Raul
And they ambushed him at the Castillo de San Cristobal with medical instruments
They extracted his eyeballs, cut out his tongue, and amputated his thumbs
And all Raul could say was “Oh, bo!”

Yusif and Hammad of St. Paul, Minnesota said “Yes”
And that is how they started campaigning door to door for Hubert Humphrey
(Remember Hubert Humphrey?)
One particular Sunday was their best ever afternoon of Persuasion
Hammad said “Praise Jesus!” Yusif praised Allah
And they punched each other in the face and mailed all the checks to Reverend Moon(Oh no!)

Busbee Irwin of Brisbane, Australia said “Yes”
And commenced to kickboxing with a kangaroo and he played defense
Well at first
And almost rope-a-doped a roo until he found
A kangaroo has a third foot tucked under his tail, a fourth
That pops out of his right eye, a fifth out of his left
And has a Bruce Lee fist for a tongue… Oh, no!

Donna May of Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania finally said “Yes”
And agreed to change into her gym clothes with all the other girls
In the change room
They all said, “Eww!” and began picking off the scabs that covered her whole body
Until the pus ran out of her and her body shrank to the size of a dried pea and ran down the shower drain
And when the plumber arrived all he could say was “Oh, no!”


Yes-People you’re going down
You know that “No means no”
But “Yes” does not mean “No”
And that is a problem.

Jim Watkinson of Ketchikan, Alaska said “Yes”
And leaped from the dock of the salmon processing plant
Into the inner passage
And though it was July, it was a scrotum-shrinking swim
An otter floated by and thinking Jim was after his clams beat him with his feet
Until Jim thought he would drown, but his friends pulled him out and paid him his five dollars.


His sister posted the video on YouTube.

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Friday, August 7, 2015

How To Improve Your Gas Mileage

Tom Brady noticed he was getting poor gas mileage, so he took his car to the mechanic. It turned out his tires were under-inflated.








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Wednesday, July 15, 2015

The Waterboard, by M.W. Thomas

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Sunday, July 12, 2015

Lane Cake

What is Lane cake? That's what I asked Google when I got to page 139 of my copy of To Kill A Mockingbird. We're in Chapter 13 and to Scout's dismay, Aunt Alexandra has arrived from Finch's Landing and declared residency at the house in Maycomb "for a while." Being well regarded in town, she is welcomed almost as royalty.

In greeting, Miss Maudie makes a Lane cake that Scout says was "so loaded with shinny it made me tight." Miss Maudie Atkinson is known for her superior Lane cakes, which are...?

That question led me to a 2013 article by Tom McNamara called The Cake That Made Maycomb Famous: The Lane Cake. You can read the article (which includes a recipe), but the upshot is that it is a cake with a sugar and bourbon ("shinny") filling usually involving finely chopped raisins or pecans. Judging from the comments section, many of Mr. McNamara's readers expected coconut in the filling. It is topped by a standard Boiled White Frosting.

Have ya'll ever had Lane cake? Do you make Lane cake? If so MIO wants to hear from you. If you have your own recipe, you can email it to myirrefutableopinion@gmail.com, and I'll be glad share it in this space (with your permission, of course.) I may even pick my favorite and try it myself!
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Saturday, July 11, 2015

Watchman: Is Your Head Exploding?

Jem dead? Atticus a racist? These are the spoilers spilled in the pages of the NYT Review of Go Set A Watchman. Do you have the vapors? If so, you seem to be in good company. Say It Ain't So tweets the universe. The comments page drips with pissing and moaning that no doubt spells "$$$" for the publisher HarperCollins.

Given recent events, it is timely to ask why we ever accepted To Kill A Mockingbird's hero, Atticus Finch, as a two-dimensional paragon of moral purity in the first place. After all, was he not a man of his times? How could such a man in the deep south not be affected by the prevailing attitudes about race and segregation?

We are told that Mockingbird is a rewrite of Watchman. I will be interested in reading Harper Lee's original painting of Atticus for myself (I am not on the publisher's list of advance reviewers, if you can believe it.  The book is scheduled for publication on Tuesday, July 14.)

Are the Atticus's of Watchman and Mockingbird truly inconsistent with each other? Mockingbird's Atticus is six-year-old Scout's Atticus. He is seen through a child's eyes, strong and heroic, bravely standing up to a mob mentality that would railroad an innocent black man to his rendezvous with death beyond all reason.

Watchman's Atticus is 26-year-old Jean Louise's Atticus. How differently does this grown-up young woman see her father since those days? How much has Atticus changed over the years with age? Is he different twenty years on, or does Jean Louise simply see him differently? Or did the character evolve in Ms. Lee's mind in a zig-zag of cultural criticism?

Unlike the TIMES reviewer, I have not had the opportunity to explore these questions with Ms. Lee's book for myself yet. But to me, the Tale of Two Atticus's is at least potentially the legitimate stuff of American Literature. And if it makes my head explode, maybe that's because it's good writin'.
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Wednesday, June 24, 2015

The Waterboard by M.W. Thomas

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Thursday, June 18, 2015

Take the Food Trivia Quiz!

Take the food trivia quiz! Do you know, or can you guess, the right answers?  You will find those below.

1. What breakfast food gets its name from the German word for "stirrup"?

2. Under federal guidelines, how much alcohol can there be in a beer labeled "non-alcoholic?

3. How did the "pound cake" get its name?

4. Wild rice isn't rice. So, what is it?

5. How long does it take to hard boil an ostrich egg?

6. What does the pasta word linguine actually mean?

7. When Birdseye introduced the first frozen food in 1930, what was it called?

8. What is the traditional food served at Wimbledon each year?

9.  What does VSOP mean on a bottle of cognac?

10. What do Eskimos use to prevent their food from freezing?

If you score:
1-3: you are a dumpster diver
4-5: you are a casual diner
6-8: you are a gourmet food critic
9-10: you cheated

Answers:
1. The bagel; 2. Up to 0.4999 percent; 3. From the 1 lb quantity of ingredients (sugar, butter, eggs, and flour); 4. An annual grass that grows in marshy lakes and shallow streams; 5. An hour and 45 minutes; 6. "Little tongues"; 7. Frosted food (yuk!); 8. Strawberries and Cream; 9. Very Superior Old Pale; 10. A refrigerator

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Tuesday, June 16, 2015

The Waterboard by M.W. Thomas

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Sunday, June 14, 2015

Make Your Own BBQ Sauce!

Summer is here and many of you will have hardworking grills and even belching smokers turning out pork ribs and beef brisket and other delectable extractions from lower down on the food chain.  With that comes the need for the marinades and sauces that make everything taste oh-so-special. The king of them all: BBQ sauce.

I am going to suggest that you make your own, if you don't already. That is not because there is any lack of fine BBQ sauces available off-the-shelf at your local grocery store. There are many good ones indeed, and BBQ sauce is one of those things that bottles and stores quite well. The argument for making your own is that you have mastery over the flavor that way, and that makes a huge difference for the savoriness of your meat and for stamping your Q with your own unique imprint. And it's ridiculously easy to make.

It helps to understand the history of BBQ sauce. The "styles" of BBQ sauce Americans are likely to think of today, Memphis style, Texas style, Carolina styles, and so on, came into being just a few generations ago. Bear in mind that tomato ketchup, which is the basis of most southern BBQ sauces (except Alabama White), was not a clearly defined product until the early years of the twentieth century. Other countries have their versions too: South America has chimichurri (for asado), the Chinese have hoisin. Until well into more contemporary times, "BBQ" sauces were ad hoc concoctions of mayonnaise, butter, lard, or various fermentations (such as Worcestershire sauce), flavored and spiced in a zillion different ways in different times and places.

The point is: there are no hard and fast rules to confine you and there is really a lot of freedom to tailor a sauce to your occasion. It is very easy to experiment, without radically departing from convention. Here's a list of likely basic ingredients you will use for a tomato-based BBQ sauce:

  • Ketchup
  • Mustard
  • Brown sugar
  • Vinegar
  • Worcestershire sauce
  • Minced garlic
  • Onion powder
  • Salt and pepper
As an example, let's say we are going to sauce up some baby back ribs. How do like your ribs? Decide what you want your sauce to bring to the party. When I smoke ribs, I want a bold and tangy sauce to go with 'em. So the plan might be: keep it simple and adjust the amounts of vinegar and brown sugar to achieve the effect I want. Dump a bottle of ketchup in a sauce pan and turn the heat to medium. As things start to warm up in there, add 1 cup of brown sugar (packed) and get it to dissolve. Then a splash of vinegar (about a tablespoon) to start. What kind of vinegar? Just whatever is on hand. White or Apple Cider vinegar, either one, will satisfice.

Let's go ahead and add a tablespoon of the Worcestershire sauce and put the bottle away. A little bit of Worcestershire will contribute some nuance to our sauce; too much will ruin it.

Now for the mustard. For this sauce, I think I'll go a little light on the mustard. Let me rummage around and see if I can find some dijon, or anything upscale from French's Yellow. Stir in about a tablespoon of it. I want to preserve the bold tomato-y flavor, so I'm not going to be too heavy handed with the garlic either. Just a half a tablespoon of the minced stuff will do.

Then let's sprinkle in about two teaspoons of onion powder and a big pinch of salt. We'll turn the heat to low and let it simmer for ten or twelve minutes, stirring occasionally. It's important not to taste and render judgment too soon. Allow time for the flavors to come together.

Grab a couple of spoons. One is your dipping spoon, the other your tasting spoon. Scoop up a sample of the sauce with your dipping spoon, and transfer it to your tasting spoon. Taste. How is it?

Now, there is already an excellent chance that our BBQ sauce is just about what we want. Not tangy enough? Then add another little splash of the vinegar and taste again, always remembering that it's easier to add an ingredient than it is to take it out. If you goof, don't worry, you will just have to add more brown sugar. If you goof a lot, you may have to add more ketchup too, just to keep everything in balance.

Okay, so our sauce is bold and tangy. But do you feel it's still a little bland? No fear! We'll make some adjustments to finish this off. Another teaspoon of onion powder. Taste. A little more garlic. Taste. Add the black pepper. Taste. Want a little smoked paprika in there? Why, it's a free country! Taste. Shoulda used just a tad bit more mustard? Add it. Taste.

Just keep adjusting and tasting until, as far you're concerned, it's perfect! Next time, you might be grilling up some chicken. In that case, you might make more use of spices (chili powder, paprika, etc.), add some lemon zest as well as some juice of the lemon, to get yet a different effect. And that's the point. If you're going to all the trouble to cook up a great meal at home, it is really not that much to ask for a home brewed sauce to make sure it's special.


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