Chili

Intended ingredients:

1 small onion
1 clove of garlic
1 Tablespoon oil 1 can of white kidney beans
1 can of diced tomatoes
1/2 diced squash
1 tablespoon chili seasoning


Actual ingredients:
1 small onion
3 cloves of garlic
2 Tablespoons oil 1 can of white kidney beans
1 can of black beans
1 cans of diced tomatoes
1 diced squash
3 tablespoons chili seasoning

Heat for five minutes:
Oil
Onion
Garlic

Drain and rinse:
Cans of beans

Add:
Drained and rinsed beans
Tomatoes, not drained, not rinsed.

Stir.

Add: 
Chili seasoning
Squash

Simmer 20 minutes.

Add:  Jalapenos or whatever.

Serve over spaghetti if you were born in Ohio.

Couscous Salad

Intended ingredients:
None

Actual ingredients:

Half of a 13 oz container of pearl couscous
Half of a huge tomato
Half of a cucumber
2 Tablespoons of finely chopped onion (chopped with a mini food processor, because I am too lazy to chop onions more than once a week if I can avoid it)
1 Tablespoon dried basil
2 Tablespoons dried parsley
Burn spray
Almost 1/4 cup olive oil
Almost 1/4 cup sweet vinegar
Dash of ground mustard seed
A little salt
A little pepper
A squirt of lemon


Cook:

Couscous according to package directions.


While waiting, do the following:

Dice the tomato and onion as small as you can.  If it's just chunks, it won't taste horrible, but if you are weird about textures you will need to finely dice.
Put in large bowl for which you have a lid
Add the onion
Throw in basil and parsley

Check couscous.
Apply burn spray to the steam burn on your inner forearm.

Add the rest of the ingredients to a little bowl and whisk together with a fork.

Couscous should be done now.  Put in bowl with the cucumber mixture.
Dump dressing on it.
Put the lid on.
Hold the lid tightly.
Shake.

Refrigerate.
Shake again to make sure the couscous doesn't turn into a lump.  Gotta keep that oil between the pearls.

Eat.

Ford F-150

This here is a Ford F-150, aka "Christmobile."  This one has three things that make it slightly different from what you normally see:

1. A little sign saying "with Ecoboost."  While driving a Ford F-150, this seems like this is just a wee little drop in the bucket, I got to give them credit for trying.
2. It was parked outside of an organic grocery store.
3. It had New Hampshire plates.

I thought about hanging around to see who drove this vehicle, because there is whoever drives this thing has to be interesting.

Too Damn Hot

This was taken at a local movie theater where the window faces west.  The surface is, despite being a reflective silver, extremely hot.  I really want to live somewhere with a more temperate climate.

Practical Windows

What you see here is a double paned window that opens as one.  I wish we had these where I live, since they probably do a good job of keeping the heat out!

Bottom Bunk

If you turn your head to the side, you can see that it looks like an old man pointing at his eyeball while giving you a look.  This was the view of the top bunk from my pillow.  I found him rather amusing and a good companion.

The View

This is the view at sunset from the window nearest my bed in the cabin.

Really Hot Room

 Here is a picture of the really hot room. It was brought over, log by log, from Finland itself.

Not Good for the Pupu

This is a story about a bunny that was looking for a den.  He finally finds a place and that was already occupied by other bunnies but they became friends. 

And then the dog gets them.

And now I know why Sonata Arctica's lyrics make death by hanging seem a joyful option, despite the chipper tone of the music.

Still, I'll cheerfully visit Finland and avoid bunny burrows.



Note:  The book was written by a British person named Helen Piers and has been out of print for a long time in the English speaking world.

Rainbow

Ugh!  I wish the rainbow showed up better on here.  In any case, there was a storm that came through near sunset that split the sky in two and left a lovely rainbow.

Unruly Barrel of Balls

This gentleman was eating from a barrel of cheez balls in a major US airport and I had to get a picture.  The only way I could do it without looking like a lunatic was by taking a picture of the store and hoping I looked like a sports fan.  It appeared that he was eating them along with a Tupperware container of salad or some sort of casserole thing.  He must work at the airport, because I know of no airline that has a baggage bin that would fit this container due to its unruly shape, despite the fact that this guy cleared security with his unruly barrel of balls.

Misunderstanding Dairy Queen

 

I gotta ask, why would someone want a Dairy Queen burrito?  I can see why someone may feel the need to do this in more rural areas where the dining options are Dairy Queen, McDonald's, and the super expensive Italian restaurant that you only go to on your anniversary.  However, this was taken in the middle of a very large city across the street from two Mexican restaurants. The other disturbing thing is that the burrito special comes with a small drink.  Apparently, these Dairy Queen folks have never eaten a burrito, otherwise they'd know just how salty they are!  And why not offer a combo with ice cream, what with being Dairy Queen and all?

Salolampi

Last week, I went to an adult learning camp for Finnish. Why?  The other two language options were languages that I either already speak of have studied, so I would feel some pressure to not look like a moron.  I figured there would be no stress because who could possibly be expected to learn Finnish and learn it really well in a week?  Besides, Finnish language, folklore, and history fascinate me and I'd like to go to a music festival there without making a total ass out of myself and/or not being able to yell for help when I do.  Besides, my brain was starting to atrophy and needed some watering, even if the water was being flung from a ladle onto a bunch of flaming hot rocks while I am sitting in a small, dark room with a bunch of strangers.  For the record, if you ever have an opportunity to do the sitting in a dark room with someone throwing water on hot rocks thing, do it.  I can't put my finger on why, but it is very pleasant.

It was the most relaxing week ever.  A few hours of language instruction, plus cultural presentations (schools, music, the Winter War, design, handicrafts!), plus arts and crafts, plus mealtimes, plus sitting in a really hot room until you were literally steaming on the way to go wade into a lake with loons making loon noises in the distance, make for a long day.  However, there is no work, no planning meals, no shopping, no laundry to do, no nothing.  Just the language stuff.  And a library with lots of books, some in English and almost all with pictures.  The instructor I had was very much of the 'tell me what you want to know and I'll teach it to you and not laugh at you when you accidentally use the word for "piss" instead of "spruce" or "pleased to murder you" when meeting someone' mindset.  I'm not sure how the upper level classes were, but the one I was in was a lot of fun and we learned quite a bit of useful information.

The other people attending this were really interesting people who didn't care if one was socially awkward or eating some weird vegetarian thing.  In fact, the only comments about the weird food was 'How is it?' or 'That looks good.'  And the weird food was good.  The vegetarian options were pretty much the same with an alternative protein, such as lentils or white beans.  If there was some nasty tofu fake meat there, it was well hidden.

The people were very nice, the food was good, everything was interesting, and the grounds were wonderful.  If you are looking for a serious heavy duty scholarly thing, this will not work for you, nor would any one week program for that matter.  If you are looking for a week to unwind, learn some interesting language stuff, check your progress as you are learning on your own all year, and learn a good bit of cultural stuff, you need to go do this.  And hope you're not stuck in a cabin with me, since I snore like a bear.  If anyone in my cabin ever reads this, I am very sorry and I publicly thank you for not killing me in my sleep.

Woodland Chicken?

The only chicken of the woods I have ever heard of is a rather frightening species of mushroom. This doesn't look much better.

Beef Cheesesteak

All non meat food is gross.  Yeah.  Ummmm....ewwww.  I'll stick to my weird spicy food, thanks.

Fake of a Fake & Vegetarians

This here is a picture of something barfworthy.  It consists of multiple fake products in one.  Fake pork product from a company known for making fake poultry product covered in fake a cheese product that proclaims '1ST NON DAIRY CHEESE THAT REALLY MELTS.'  When hanging out with pizza eating friends, this product should allow you to not be observed as the weirdo, provided none of your friends have any sense of smell. 


I get why it can be necessary fly under the radar as a non meat eater.  It sucks to stand out as the one eating the weird thing since the weird thing you are eating stands out like a neon target to the biggest asshole in the room (unless you are the biggest asshole in the room yourself, that is).  If you go to a BBQ and bring a fake hot dog, you'll look like a precious princess to the one manning the grill, but you won't stand out as a target to everyone else there unless you throw a fit over the state of the grill instead of quietly wrapping your fake flesh turd looking thing in foil. Yeah, it sucks that the non meat eaters have to bear the brunt of social niceties in these situations, but such is life.  In years past, oddballs were burned at the stake, so getting ribbed at a BBQ that you are invited to every year isn't the end of the world.  Eventually, the world should evolve past this crap, but it's not there yet.  Just be happy you aren't being thrown out of the village.

To the meat eaters out there, if your non meat eating friend claims to love lettuce on a bun and that they aren't hungry at all, they're probably lying.  Offer them an orange or something that they can eat and don't make a big deal about it.  Now, if your non meat eating friend is yelling 'Don't you hear your grilled cheese sandwich screaming?' you have every right to go on about the feelings of tomatoes and how the act of eating a tomato is aborting baby tomatoes before they have a chance to grow.

And if you are wondering what vegetarians eat, they eat lots of things.  There are a million varieties of people who abstain from one or more animal products, but it still leaves a lot of room to eat.  I've gone a week or more without cooking with any dairy products and no one who was eating out of my kitchen noticed.  How do you do this?  You don't cook with fake meat.  Corn impersonates chicken as well as bacon impersonates a carrot.  Don't even try.  Tofu is not turkey.  Lightly bread the tofu and fry it and serve it in a spicy stir fry.  It's going to be some weird item in a weird dish that some people will like and no one is going to wonder what the ingredients should have been.  Hellfire Passover Potatoes have no meat and can be made without dairy.  No one is going to notice the meal is meatless between cries of agony and gulps of liquid to quench the flames.

It's not a CRAP!

I don't know why this annoys me so bad. But when I hear someone pronounce crêpe as 'crap' it really pisses me off. Call it a 'crape' and rhyme it with grape and I'll be happy. Call it a 'crepp' and I'll be happy, too. But call it a 'crap' and I am going to want to suffocate you in one made of cement. I don't care of some random dialect calls it a 'crap' and sure as hell don't want to be offered a Nutella filled one by someone saying 'want a filled crap?' Anyway, here is a recipe for these things. My French is pretty bad, but the video shows pretty clearly how to make one of these good thin pancake thingies. Recette des crêpes




And here is someone showing you how to say it in a far more diplomatic way than I can ever manage:

Rug Thing

Poison Ivy

Pink Tree

Lake

Where Did You Come From XXXX

London arrived from bing.com on "Drinking Tea: DrinkingTea's What to Wear to a Metal Show I" by searching for drinking tea is metal.

Of course DrinkingTea is not metal.  DrinkingTea clearly listens to Broadway show tunes while brewing up a pot of citroen spiked oolong tea.

Hubcaps on the Head & Behemoth at the Diamond Ballroom

Now that I think about it, I may as well write about the rest of that show we saw in Oklahoma.

Arkaik - Missed them

Abysmal Dawn - I wrote about them a few days ago.  They were good.

In Solitude - BLECH! There is a nasty stomach bug going around and I'm hoping the singer was hit with it.  And that's me being charitable, because if that's not what the problem was, then their bass player is fully justified in kicking his ass. Mr. Bass Player performed the front man duties very well by drawing the eye to himself and away from his performance of a drunk guy on a boat.  If Mr. Bass Player could sing (I have no idea if he could or not), I'd suggest having him do so and dispatching the singer to a bad folk metal band. I don't know if Mr. Singer was channeling Jim Morrison or did really have a bad case of norovirus, but I could really go the rest of my life without seeing another emaciated Swedish man's pants outlining his unbeschnitten genitals while he is listing to the left with a dead animal around his neck.  Musically, they weren't bad at all.  I'd have to see them again before I would be willing to stick a permanent 'This sucks' label on them.

The Devil's Blood - They were very good for that style of music, but totally not my cup of tea. They sound like they'd be good music to listen to at a cookout, though.

Exhumed - Ah, good, relaxing death metal.  It was exactly what I expected and I was pleased.

Watain - As much as I wanted to hate these guys, they were great.  If you like this flavor of music, go see them.  You will not be disappointed.  When they took the stage, I was thinking 'Yeah, they're going to suck as bad as the last bunch of Swedes.  I bet they don't sleep either.'  Then, they played and they sounded good doing it. Their flavor of black metal is the more along the lines of the standard fast and loud and ugly, not too far to the east with the buzzy almost ambient stuff with screaming (disclaimer:  I do love Beherit) and not too far to the west with the Tender Turkey Tunes.  My main issue with them was that I could smell them from twenty feet away.  I have no idea if they had anything dead with them, but the spirit of the dead sure was there even if someone binned whatever dead thing they allegedly travel with.  Pee You.

Behemoth - Yeah, they were what I expected, which was excellent.  As brutal as the band before, but they sounded very together, for lack of a better term.  Totally different feel than listening to them with my headphones at work.  They were super loud, super clear, and very brightly lit. 

Cannibal Corpse - We left before they got too horribly far into the set.  Cannibal Corpse are the mashed potatoes of death metal and I love them for it.  You know what you're going to get - comforting, soothing, smooshed up starchy goodness flung at you at top speed with a growl. 

Where Did You Come From XXXIX

Las Cruces, New Mexico arrived from google.com on "Drinking Tea: July 2010" by searching for "alcohol an allowable" business expense.

Good question.  Are you distilling it or are you drinking it/giving it to someone else to drink or are you selling it?  I'm assuming that if you are distilling it or selling it, you have the taxes already sorted out.  If not, we'll probably see you in a reality show about bootleggers.  So, I'll assume this is a business entertainment expense.

For the short answer, get off of google, go call the IRS from a pay phone so they have no clue who you are, and ask them.

For the long answer, keep reading.

Are you talking IRS here or are you talking about your company's policies?  If it's the second, get off of google and badger your HR person.  They may not know, since HR people aren't the tax accountants that determine what is and what is not safe for the business, but heaven knows the world thinks that HR people are the morons who should know everything (but don't).  When your HR person tells you to go talk to the bozo over in finance, just say that the bozo sent you to the HR office to ask and that HR should know because the bozo doesn't. 

Are you a federal contractor in the US?  Go read up on the Federal Acquisition Regulations, also known as the FAR.  Talk about painful reading.  One paragraph says one thing and then it is contradicted elsewhere in the document.  Even if it is considered a legitimate business expense, it may be considered FAR Unallowable, so keep that in mind when putting together your G&A and overhead rates.  And for the love of Pete, do not code it as fringe or health and welfare, no matter how drunk you feel you need to get your HR staff after the last moron of an accounting clerk got all pissy with them when no one in the HR suite could tell them how to code an invoice from Bob's Booze and Boobs.

Do you work for a Muslim or Seventh Day Adventist firm?  If so, how conservative are the owners?  If they are conservative at all, stick with water and avoid this question entirely.

If none of the above are true, I think you can deduct half of it if it's the cost of getting new business or keeping clients as part of an entertainment expense, but you want to check with someone who is smart enough to stay out of mosh pits and manages to avoid the need for burn spray when steaming vegetables.  Personally, I would avoid the alcohol, since it seems like too much of a pain in the ass.

People You See - Goat Horns and Funny Half Assed Horns

Little by little, I am learning to take clearer pictures with my camera phone.  This picture shows a crowd of people doing the devil's horns.  As the night goes on, people become drunk and tired.  The devil's horns start wilting.  From left to right, you see:

1. Slightly relaxed hands
2. A one fingered horn
3. Someone flipping off someone 
4. Horns in motion
5. A hand showing that they just gave up and decided to just wave a hand around
6. Proper display of horns
7. Another proper display of horns
8. What appears to be the horns of a devil with an underactive thyroid who is slightly sleepy

At folk metal shows or chugga chugga crap shows, you'll see plenty of fists.  If I were a larger person more apt to get into fights, I would love to go to a war metal show and flash the peace sign.  Then, when someone calls me out on it, flatten them and do the Mexican hat dance around them and then show the peace sign again with a flourish.

I hate war metal.  That has to be some of the most boring crap I've ever heard.  There may be a good war metal band out there, but I've never heard them.  

People You See - Generic Death Metal Guy in Shorts

This person is wearing a sleeveless shirt, shorts, and comfy shoes with the socks pushed down.  This puts him over the age of 30.  Under the age of 30, he'd be wearing anklets. Until fairly recently, a guy wearing anklets was at risk of ridicule from his friends.  My first instinct is to have a snide remark, but then I realize that socks slouched down or those stupid looking athletic socks with the three stripes up top are far worse. I suspect this is the real reason why guys in thrash bands often whined about not getting laid.

If the Reverse Stalker sees this, he will likely ask what men should wear on the lower half of their bodies.  The answer to that is simple - as much as possible.  Many men look fine above the waist.  None look good below it.  Between your belly button and the soles of your feet, there is one and only one hard and fast fashion rule - cover that shit up!  Most other things are debatable.

People You See - Generic Thrash Guy

This lovely young man displays the flamboyant plumage of a thrash fan. Notice the following:
Long hair
Jacket with patches
Tighter than usual pants (as a concession to the new century, the butt is slightly baggy)
White high top sneakers
Hands on hip stance.  I have no idea why thrash guys stand this way, but I've never seen someone in a Cannibal Corpse shirt standing like that.

If he were German, he'd wear a bullet belt.  In the US and Canada, fans tend to dress as fans and bands tend to dress as bands.  In Europe, some fans dress more like musician than most band members do.  In the US, this is as extreme as you're likely going to get, short of that guy at the Finntroll show a few years back who was dressed as a troll.

People You See - Generic Death Metal Guy

Shirt, slight slouch, hands in pocket.  This specimen can be found all over the world wearing exactly the same shirt.

People You See - Generic Metal Guy

This here is a generic metal guy, spotted at an Overkill show in Austin, Texas.  Identifying characteristics are:

1. Cross armed posture
2. Long hair
3. Slightly baggy jeans
4. Black shirt
5. Comfy shoes

They can be found in groups or standing alone.  May be drunk, but usually those displaying such plain plumage tend to be sober.  Or stoned rather than drunk.  They can be shy, outgoing, nice, awful, smart, or stupid.  You have no idea until they turn around.  Once they turn around, it'll be pretty obvious.

The stereotype of metal people is that they are all stupid.  This is not true.  Metal people are no more or less stupid than the population as a whole.  They just display their stupidity for the world to see.  This is why I am less nervous in crowds of metal people, since you know full well which ones are the stupid ones since the stupid ones wave their stupidity around like a giant banner in a tornado.  In the workplace, it may not be as obvious and real damage can occur before you can identify the morons.

People You See - Taco Truck

This truck smelled as bad as you'd imagine something that is called a Korean Taco Truck would smell like. Maybe the tacos are good.  I have no idea.  I don't eat pork products, I don't eat refried beans, and I sure as hell do not eat something that smells like that truck smelled.  It's probably good, since most food that comes out of a truck is wonderful good.  But I am not about to risk eating something that smells like this.

Disclaimer:  I like Korean food.  Kimchee is one of the very few manifestations of cabbage I can tolerate.  I also like some Mexican food, but those are two cuisines that should stay far, far from one another.