Kool-az

Kool-az Lessons Ala Carte

Poor Man's Soo Vede

Techno Thrills Poor Man's Soo Vede

Total Time: 10 hours Active Time: 30 mins -- mostly calibrating Makes: 2-6 servings I’ve pondered buying expensive sous vide equipment, but found I can get the job done quite well with appliances I already have that would cost under $100 —a good quality digital thermometer (ideally one with a probe on a wire) and an electric wok or skillet with an old fashioned analog temperature control. The analog control is essential. A digital control with low-medium-high like is found in crock pots is not going to do it. The old fashioned dial control on your mom’s electric skillet —the one with that curious metal spike coming out of it — is the kind you need. The magic of this technique is once you’ve brought your food to cooking temperature (say 145-50) using a precise digital thermometer, you should be able to get your cheap, simple analog control to maintain it at that temperature with accuracy that is plenty good enough for excellent results. (PoorMan's Soo Vede cont.) I've been wanting to try soo vede for awhile, but about the cheapest you can get into it is $100 for what is prolly crap.  Then I found Poor Man's Soo Vede and gave it a try.  We've had that Rival skillet for years and hardly ever used it. The pic is pretty much explanatory, but bottom line is that the result was quite satisfactory.  I let it cook soo vede for about 12 hours and had just one complaint.  I like my soup a little hotter than 140°, but 2 minutes in the microwave fixed that right up.  You're welcome. (Eat your heart out Helly)

Top Gear Fun

Jeremy Clarkson with Michael Fassbender

Penis News

Today's WTF?

This is insane.  I'm sure they could have found a donor penis that was at least big enough to see without a microscope if they cared.  Pricks.

A fine picture

sick in transit gloria Sigh

A warning from The Prince

a major award

A warning from the author of The Prince, (and the King) The Prince “When one considers how much corruption there was in those kings, if two or three successive reigns had continued the same way, and that corruption which was in them had spread to members of the body politic, it would no longer have been possible to reform [Rome].” That was Niccolo Machiavelli, commenting in his Discourses on Livy published in 1517, almost 500 years ago, on what might have happened if the ancient Roman monarchy had not been overthrown by Brutus and a republic established. Although better known for his masterpiece of political violence, The Prince, here in Discourses Machiavelli’s clear preference for republican government and liberty can be found. But, writes Machiavelli, freedom has a prerequisite, and that is virtue — a love of liberty. Lacking this virtue, then, a people become ambivalent to politics and those who wield power. Politics becomes the province of the powerful that participate, and lacking power, is something to otherwise be avoided out of fear. There are those who have access, and then there is everyone else. If such a form of government persists for long, the freedom of the republic as a whole is ultimately lost, and the people themselves are corrupted. Not in the sense that they are accepting bribes — although public forms of subsistence duly enacted can be common in these cases to sweeten the deal of wearing a yoke — but in that inherent inability and unwillingness of the people and their representatives to affect the outcome of public ... [Full] All that article did for me was trigger a feeling of futility about engaging in political discourse.  It will be useless when debating "Progressives" to cite from, say, the The American Colonist's Library when your opponent will rebut by citing Rachel Maddow. A couple of years ago I found what I think is the perfect analogy in Plato's Allegory of the Cave.  So I'll just resubmit. THE KING "Plato has Socrates describe a gathering of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to ascribe names to these shadows. According to Plato's Socrates, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality." When one of the chained is released into the real world, he is astounded.  When he goes back to the cave to tell his brethren that everything they've learned from the shadows is false, they would kill him if they could for questioning what they learned in Professor José Ángel Gutiérrez's classroom.

Relationships

Free Music

Der Metzger guy sent me a link or The Nostalgia Machine.  It's sortable by year, but in the final analysis it uses YouTube one at a time.  Which reminded me that many of you prolly don't  know that the jukebox icon up top connects to something much slicker.  You're welcome.

LUTHER UPDATE

update Unplugged My exuberance over LUTHER caused me to review it before finishing the last episodes.  Which is too bad, because we watched the last three last night and had I waited I'd have said this was the best series ever.  What?  I did what?  Nevermind.

So Obama goes to heaven ...

*snortz* Having arrived at the Gates of Heaven, Barack Obama meets a man with a beard. "Are you Mohammed?" he asks. "No, My Son, I am St. Peter; Mohammed is higher up." Peter then points to a ladder that rises into the clouds. Delighted that Mohammed should be higher than St. Peter, Obama climbs the ladder in great strides, ascends up through the clouds and comes into a room where he meets another bearded man. He asks again, "Are you Mohammed?" "Why, No", the man answers, "I am Moses; Mohammed is higher still." Exhausted, but with a heart full of joy,  he climbs the ladder yet again, he discovers a larger room where he meets an angelic looking man with a beard. Full of hope, he asks again, "Are you Mohammed?" "No, I am Jesus, the Christ...you will find Mohammed higher up." Mohammed higher than Jesus! Man, oh Man! Obama can hardly contain his delight and climbs and climbs ever higher. Once again, he reaches an even larger room where he meets this truly magnificent looking man with a silver white beard, and once again repeats his question: "Are you Mohammed?" he gasps, as he is by now totally out of breath from all his climbing. "No, My Son.... I am Almighty God, the Alpha and the Omega. But you look exhausted. Would you like a cup of coffee?" Obama says, “Yes, please”! God looks behind him, claps his hands and yells out: "Hey Mohammed - two coffees!" The stu and skoonj show (via comments pages of American Thinker)

IRS SCAM CALLS

Scam Central What's Worse Than The IR? A Russian Scam IR* So, we saw Algonquin J. Calhoun, CPA yesterday to get our 2014 taxes finalized.  About three hours ago our phone rings and the message is from the IRS stating that they are levying a tax lien against us for failure to pay, and everything we have is forfiet.  Please press* now.  Since I didn't listen live I could not press *, nor would I because the IRS NEVER EVER contacts customers via telephone.  There is little doubt that what triggered this call was  Calhoun e-Filing our return.  He told us that he has to tweak his computer every day to thwart hackers who are able to glean name and phone numbers from e-Files, so we were forewarned.  My question still is, if they can tweak the transmission to get name and phone number, what's to stop them from getting the whole kit?  Watch your bank accounts carefully. * I say Russian scam, because they are responsible for a goodly share of criminal spammery.

LUTHER BBC

LUTHER

Taking tips from some of y'all I decided to give  BBC's LUTHER a try after we ran out of streaming Broadchurch*.   I have no shame when it comes to naming something the best ever, so I will do it again.  This is the best series ever.   Here's the categories that LUTHER excels in: Best psychopathic villainy ever in a continuing series.  I mean skin crawl creepy.  One of them, Alice, who is introduced in episode one, killed her parents and their dog, and successfully matches wits with Luther.  As the series progresses Alice more or less takes on the roll of White Collar's man Mozzy.  A Fixer.   I have to admit that straightaway I am way drawn to Alice, creepiness and all. Best television script iconoclasticism, so to speak. By that I mean that us viewers have over the years come to anticipate and accept certain script formulae.  Like, you do not begin a television series called Luther, and then kill Luther in the first episode.  They did not do that here, but one gets the impression someone brought it up at a writers meeting.  Nothing is sacred.  Nothing. I see that FOX is/has adapted this to an American version.  Without seeing it, I feel quite comfortable saying it sucks. Broadchurch*  We watched epiode one of the new series, reputed to be horrible, and found it not.

Treason wears two hats

Some Real Corkers

More Failure Theater from the GOP More Failure Theater from the GOP [...] Not every Senate Republican signed on to Sen. Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AR)82%’s extraordinary letter to Iran’s leaders, and several of those who didn’t are fuming about the freshman senator’s Monday-morning foray into nuclear diplomacy. Some of the seven dissenters told POLITICO they have doubts about Cotton’s move, saying there are more effective means to force President Barack Obama to address Congress’ concerns about the deal. With Republicans needing significant Democratic support to achieve their goal of derailing the talks — or at least altering the emerging deal — some senators said Cotton’s effort could backfire by injecting excessive partisanship into the debate over how best to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman  said he was approached to sign the letter by Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, but he concluded it might set back his ultimate goal: veto-proof support for a bill he has sponsored requiring a congressional vote to approve or reject an Iran deal. This is simply Failure Theater by a handful of GOP senators who are devoid of honor, courage, self-respect and respect for their fellow Americans. The fact that Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN)48% can even contemplate that the votes can be put together to override an Obama veto of a bill requiring Congressional oversight shows that Corker is either a complete moron (and this is by no means a wild flight of imagination) or that he thinks the Democrats would be happy to see America nuked by Iran because someone was all meany-pants to Barack Obama (again, based on what  ... [ More Failure Theater from the GOP cont] This is just great.  While Corker and the McConnellettes were blathering on about the supposed apostasy of  Cottontail Republicans, guess what? Democrats: we were wrong about that whole dissent being patriotic thing Forty-seven United States Senators did what desperately needed to be done. They sent a letter to the hardline Islamic radicals who run Iran — and let’s not fool ourselves, the only difference between Iranian hardliners and Iranian moderates involves beard length — informing them that the deal they are about to cut with Obama is simply not going to be approved by the Senate. The White House went into internet-troll mode, which seems to be its default position these days. All of which prompted:  The White House went into internet-troll mode, which seems to be its default position these days: Joe Biden took precious time off from groping women guest to render his judgment: With the White House’s instigation, the left went bat***t crazy. Howard Dean, the left’s answer to  ... Smokem if you gottem

There's No Place Like Utopia; Problem

When Progressives are in charge                             There's No Place Like Utopia                                      'Utopia' shows what happens to cities under 'progressives' 'Everything had changed for the worse ... no one was progressing' utopia-film Joel Gilbert's 2014 documentary film, "There's No Place Like Utopia," depicts Barack Obama as the wizard in an Oz-like story that offers some surprises. Such as that Peggy Joseph – the Florida voter who became infamous during the 2008 presidential campaign for saying Barack Obama would "pay for my gas and my mortgage" – no longer supports the president. "Obama has made promise after promise that have all turned out to be empty, all turned out to be lies," said Gilbert. "The people I met who supported him were literally in dungeons in the witch's castle, everything had changed for the worse – Detroit, South Side Chicago, Newark. "Fifty years of progressive control over these cities demonstrated that no one was progressing, they were all regressing." The movie takes viewers on a journey of discovery across America, emulating the highly successful style of progressive filmmaker Michael Moore. In it, Gilbert depicts Barack Obama as "the Wizard" in the Land of Oz. (via skoonj) You can watch the full movie on Amazon, for one. I watched about 20 minutes and will give it a B for production value.  The problem with it is this.  Who's the market?  The Choir? Is there one  person here with the slightest doubt about what the "Utopian State" means to deliver?   And does not understand the methods used to employ it?  Who will not have seen, heard and understood every example given, including Peggy Joseph's idiocy?  We've seen it all.  Throwing  in some naked women, maybe with Rachel Maddow having sex with Ed Schulz might hold an audience.  I don't know. Obama supporters? Certainly not.  Even if they were somehow induced to watch, at the first criticism of Progressive policy they'd scream "racist" and run off to Snopes to have some fact refuted ala carte.  Hopeless. So, what does it take to get the message across?  I have no real idea.  At some point they'll be taken by the IR for interrogation.  Maybe for some apostasy, like criticizing the government demand that they install CCTV cameras in their homes. That might drive the message home.  But even there, they are just as likely to applaud the government's crime fighting initiative and happily comply. So, bottom line, and in our own self sefense, we just have to kill them all (oh stop, I meant that in the good way).  Sorry.

Donna Edwards, YIKES!

Beating Dead Horses Because They Aren't Really Dead should be, but they ain't

Edwards Makes Senate Bid Official Oh goody.  Donna Edwards is, thanks to Democrat gerrymandering, my congress critter.  Unless she's challenged by the Sarbanes (50 yr old) kid, I'd say she's automatic.  I say that because, statewide, nobody knows who the hell she is; so if Rep. John Sarbanes goes for it, he's a shoe-in   Why? This is how the Baltimore Sun announced John Sarbanes bid for congress: Eventually, the family business would have an opening. When Paul Sarbanes announced last year that he would not be seeking a sixth term, Democratic Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin declared his candidacy for the seat. Sarbanes lives in Cardin's district. Maryland voters still think Paul Sarbanes is who they're voting for.  And Family business, said with nary a blush,  says everything about elected Democrats today. Because, like any good businessmen they want to see the business grow. You see the problem. They do not.  But I digress.  Sen. Barbara  Mikulski, like Sen. Paul Sarbanes had a formula.  Stay under the radar; don't do anything.  In Sarbane's case it was something of a joke, in my mind anyway, that every six-years the Sunpapers would remind Marylanders that he was running for another six years, and while he was not much in the public eye, he was seen by his colleagues in the Senate as behind-the-scenes cerebral.  For her part, Mikulski who to my knowledge never did anything but vote 100% Lib, was seen by her colleagues as a 4'11" martinet with an "in-your-face style" that made her office a hotbed of fear. When something wasn't done just right (i.e., a desk with a stool for her feet) she'd "flip out."  Also called a bitch. In 1985 I met a (female) school teacher from, I think, Catonsville who was Mikulski's lover.  I wasn't so much scandalized to discover that Mikulski was a lesbian as that anyone could possibly want to put their face into hers, let alone nether regions.  Ugh. Anyway, if I thought Edward's leaving her House seat for the senate would help get us representation that was even close to AA County's general conservatism, I'd be okay.  But there's scant chance of that.  No, the only hope we have here in Maryland is for a meteor to fall on a car carrying, preferably, both senators so our Republican Gov. can appoint me (and a friend?) to the Senate.

Quick Puff Pastry Pot Pie

FOOD

Bot Poi TOTAL TIME 2hrs PREP 1 hr 15 mins COOK 45 mins Liar! From Alton Brown on NetFlix;A Bird In The Pie Is Worth Two In The Bush (Episode: EA1415H), came this recipe for Individual Chicken Pot Pie with Puff Pastry.  I suppose I'll do this again since eveyone liked it, but even with the experience of having made it, there is no way this is a 2 hour deal (more like 4 hours, first time anyway); the crust dough alone requires one hour of refigertion.  That said, learning how to make this quick puff pastry is worth the exercise.  Next time I'll add another 1/2 cup of chicken broth, or perhaps wine to it.  And next time I'll follow the recipe and use just one egg, not two, in the egg wash.  You're welcome.

VEGAN STORIES

Unplugged

Univision Take-Down

TAKE DOWN A Univision (the Voice of  Ilegal Aliens, and by proxy Obamunism) reporter asks a man with blood streaming down his face if he's a racist, and if he likes Latin people. Reverend Jesse Peterson scolds her for asking racist questions. This is the way it's supposed to work.

Tortilla Pizza 2

Use Your Cast Iron Pan and a Tortilla to Make World Class Bar-Style Pizza in Under 12 Minutes Cuzzin' ricky harshes my mellow by showing that I did not in fact invent the tortilla pizza  which forces me to return all the Pay Pal "thank you" donations I received.  Thankkkkkkkkkkkkkk youuuuuuuu cuzzin ricky.

So these two dogs ..

Catharsis

WOOF The owner of a female dog who was "in heat" agreed to look after her neighbor's male dog while they were on vacation.   She had a large house and believed that she would be keep the two dogs apart.   Predictably, as she was drifting off to sleep she heard awful howling and moaning sounds downstairs.  She rushed downstairs and found the dogs locked together, in obvious pain and unable to disengage.   Unable to separate them, and perplexed as to what to do next, despite the late hour she called the vet, who answered in a very grumpy voice.   Having explained the problem to him, the vet said, "Hang up the phone and place it down alongside the dogs. I will then call you back and the noise of the ringing will make the male lose his erection and he will be able to withdraw."   "Do you think that will work?" she asked.   "Just worked on me," he replied. T.Mann

Prince Chuck Caption

Ms. Anniston Peaks

Scene one

Rats and Their Ratling

Dems vow to protect Boehner from conservative coup

Any more Questions?

Generation War

Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter

Generation War HD The narrative begins:  Shortly before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, five close friends have a party in Berlin. The brothers Wilhelm and Friedhelm are respectively an officer and enlisted man in the military. Viktor is a Jew who owns a tailor shop. Charlotte just passed her examination as a military nurse. Greta is a beautiful bartender who wishes to become a famous singer. The friends are hopeful that they will meet again by Christmas (wiki) I ran into some clips of this 3-part (subtitled) German mini-series on YouTube, and horry clap!  Streams on Netflix.  If I'm honest, such is the power to suck one into the realism of Nazi horror that I've had trouble watching some of it.  There are no laughs. Well, maybe if you're a Muslim. Some nice looking chicks, however.