Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Cedric Tover should be Ashamed to call himself a chef.

okay, while I finish writing this article you should watch this fifteen minute video to deeply understand my ire.

So after watching that video you should have come to believe, as I myself do, that the owners of the Peacock Cafe have an interview process for their prospective head chefs that must go a little bit like this:
"Have you cooked before?"
'A-yup.'
"Hold this knife and cut something."
'Okay, how about this carrot?'
"Brilliant! You sure taught that root a lesson! Have you taught people to cook before?"
'A-yup.'
"Okay, tell me how to cook this carrot."
'you put it in the pan, turn on the flame and cook until it is done.'
"GodDAMN I like your style! You're Hired!"


Obviously their process is a bit more involved than that (I believe they use parsnips) and not all persons who are competent in the kitchen can teach others to cook, but if I were the owner of the Peacock cafe in New York's illustrious Waldorf Astoria and I heard my head chef stumbling over explaining what makes an heirloom tomato and heirloom tomato, or any explaining any ingredient used in the restaurant for that matter, I would not only fire him but also do my best to make sure he had a hard time running any restaurant of a higher class than a soup kitchen for the rest of his life.

I have so much more to say on this, and maybe sometime I'll get around to saying it, but my main point is this: if you're the head chef of ANY restaurant and someone brings in a monkey and say,s 'I'll pay you ten thousand dollars to teach this monkey how to make bananas foster," you better have than ten grand in your pocket by the end of the day. you should be able to teach four year olds the differences between vegetables that look the same. you should know your goddamned job and if anyone asks you a question about something you already do you had best give them an answer that edifies.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Such an Interesting Article

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Friday, November 03, 2006

Google Music Trends Rocks, World Musical Taste Sucks.

I thought that google music trends page, a page showing a weekly top listing of songs being listened to by gtalk users the world round, was one of the coolest apps in the world until i looked at it. After looking at the quite naturaly bland offerings on the "all genres, all countries" page I decided to head over to something really more up my alley, say, the all country listing for electronica. here's what i saw:

Rank

Title

Artist

Change

1

Maneater

Nelly Furtado

--

2

Always Something Better (Trentemøller Remix) [B... - Web Search

Trentemøller

1+1

3

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Daft Punk

-1-1

4

Natural Blues

Moby

3+3

5

Porcelain

Moby

1+1

6

One More Time

Daft Punk

-2-2

7

Galvanize

The Chemical Brothers

3+3

8

Aerodynamic

Daft Punk

-3-3

9

Hide and Seek

Imogen Heap

-1-1

10

Digital Love

Daft Punk

-1-1

11

Extreme Ways

Moby

5+5

12

The Rockafeller Skank

Fatboy Slim

--

13

Lift Me Up

Moby

New!

14

Strict Machine

Goldfrapp

New!

15

Around the World

Daft Punk

-1-1

16

Ooh La La

Goldfrapp

New!

17

Venus

Air

New!

18

Honey

Moby

New!

19

Short Circuit

Daft Punk

-1-1

20

Cherry Blossom Girl

Air

New!


Can I reprint that? guess I can since it was so very easy to do. copyright infringement shouldn't be that kind ov easy. I apologise for any disorientation, confusion, retching or nausea induced by reading the list above. I promise that i had nothing to do with this list being the way it is, but I'll get to that later first, I have to say this:


Nelly Fucking Furtado? MOBY? Daft Punk? TEN MOTHERFUCKING YEAR OLD FATBOY MOTHERFUCKING SLIM? MUSIC LOVERS OF THE WORLD, WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM?

I'm sorry about that little outburst it's just that when I look and see that the most marginal artist ever to grace my ears are at the top ov the electronica list It Just Makes Me Go Kinda Stupid In The HeaD, AnD - sorry.


But it's not like I'm blameless. When I got over my initial bafflement and sickened yet impotent rage I looked around for how they got these statistics that created so much wonder within me. It's all from people who:

a) use gtalk.
b) have their message to the world set to 'show current music track'
c) have 'share music listening history with Google Music Trends' selected in the Audio section of their settings.


well, one outta three ain't bad. I loves me some gtalk. Love love loves it, but I'm so very used to displaying little things I think of that are clever in my Lil' message window that I almost never want people to know what I'm listening to instead. I figure they don't really care anyway. but now I DOcare, oh yes indeedy, I care a great deal for what will seem like a very long while in this tangent-prone brain ov mine. I've gone into my gtalk and made the proper arrangements for me to share my musical tastes with the world in the hopes that just one song out of twenty on their list of the most popular will not suck.


And I Urge all of you to do the same. Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends of the Internet and all it Surveys, Lovers of Fine Electronic Music in its Myriad ov Forms, I Implore You! Go to Your Windows Machines (gtalk doesn't work on macs AFIK) throw open your Settings, and Strike a Blow for Taste! Share your Knowledge with the benighted and let them see the Light!

Overall, I blame the French for this list. I haven't actually done any research into the French portion of the electronica listing, but here's how I figure it: while most French techno is only marginally prefferable to suicide, Daft Punk has the ability to slap together a good beat or two once in a while. To the French this makes them musical gods akin to Beethoven for the Germans or Anne Murray for the Canadians. And let's face it, if you think Daft Punk is good then you've just to love premodern-trendsetter Moby and his dated antics.



The rain should stop in a few days, and then I can go outside.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Found My Backup Dream Job.

As those of you who have hotly followed my meandering career path know, I am currently involved at making my dream job, cooking and catering for myself, paying me the huge gobs of cash I know it will. But alas, my friends, I tell you this today; for every dream job you have there are unforseen dream circumstances that may take that job away from you. To this end I have searched high and low to find my very own Backup Dream Job.


The list of potential backup dream jobs was long: bacon taster(still willing to do this part time, btw), paid participant in a twenty year long medical study of the effects of nymphomaniacs on chronic pot smokers, test vacationer for the worlds five-star hotels, comic book critic, and professional bra to name just a few ov the highlights. But leave it to the Inscrutable Asian to create my true Backup Dream Job for me before I even thought ov it: Fake Wedding Priest.


As those of you who have followed my mandering chains of logic over the years know, I dearly love irritating christians. I'm gaga over it and I will never get enough if I live eight lifetimes. When chrisitianity fades away into distant obscurity many thousands of years from now I have orders in my will to have me unfrozen or robotic-cloned or whatever the reanimation fashion is at the time in order to revive christianity across the globe just so i may poke fun at its new adherents. You see, dear reader, I used to want to be a priest but with christianity being pretty much the only thing I was exposed to in the backwards state of Oklahoma I quickly became so baffled with the so called "Truths" about the ineffable purported by this ever-growing cult that I put that notion in the circular file. But it haunted me. It was everywhere I was growing up. the common feeling among Oklahomans is, or at least was, If you weren't a christian and didn't want to be there was something wrong with you; not like in a 'you're sick and must be healed' sort of way, but like in a 'you are the instrument of Lucifer and must be cast out' sort of way. Quite frankly over time I got to enjoy the latter a thousand times times a thousand times more than the former. I dare you to say the last sentence five times fast and then still be able to walk a straight line. And I liked the ritual, the censers, alot of the clothes, the buildings, the dedication that people showed to it, all that kind of stuff. Really and for true I did. Do. It's just that the message of christianity, the ultimate message about how to live in your time before your death and movement on to the next phase of whatever you want to call what we're all experiencing here, the mindset with which to approach living in the world with other cultures and thinkers and belivers and neighbors and the like is very very shortsighted and overconfrontational, with a penchant for the type of deductive reasoning that would embarass even the most junior detective by its possesion. That pithy insight of mine does not even take into account the way that the message of christianity is reinterpreted by many of its supporters, which more often that not descend into pure spiritual lunacy within a few sentences. Let's face it, if you're into spirituality or religion of any type other than christianity, you gotta admit that that if nothing else it's worth a few laughs, wars and genocides aside.


The Japanese have an incredibly low percentage of christians in their country and yet they have this high demand for fake priests because they like the clothes and pretty ritual. I myself have the same interest in reverse when it comes to my own wedding; a Japanese influence across most of the clothing and site and such but no real interest in whatever religion it is that most Japanese profess. So this whole 'fake priest' job is perfect for me. I'd get to fufill my dream of being a preist, my dream of pissing off catholics, and my dream of getting paid to do what i love.

And I wouldn't stop there, nosiree bob! I love the Japanese for their addiction to pop culture and am sure that I could pervert the profession of fake catholic priest into one that both I and the Japanese would love. Think catholic priest with a Sailor Moon outfit on. Think Hello catholic. Dance Dance Weddalution. The possibilities, they just go on and on.


So, If ever I can't go on chefing or catering, if ever I disappear for the Mysterious Orient, just know that somewhere in Japan, at the same time you are thinking of me, I am officiating a fake catholic wedding while wearing a schoolgirl outfit. Viva el Weddalution!

Monday, August 28, 2006

the problems ov nationalism.


i don't like posting about politics too much, i prefer to make my dissatisfaction with the current system known in more clandestine incindiary ways. the other reason i don't post too much about politics is that it's hard for me to not make revealing statements like the one i just made. but i'm posting this for a friend with whom i had this discussion because, as he put it, there are just too many 'ov's in this thread to share with just one man. this whole train of thought was spurred by this article, so perhaps you would like to read its excellently written arguement, which has very little to do with my post, before reading my mostly formed ramblings on the subject matter below.


for me the main failing ov the current administration became easier to sum up for me after reading that. if i were to present an arguement to a conservative that i would think was convincing, it would be this: bush didn't really care about 9/11. i explain:

it's like bush got everyone all riled up, put on his hunting gear, went up to the podium, loaded and cocked his shotgun, looked out at the audience and said "i'm gonna go and find the bastards who did this and make them pay. i will bring you back their severed heads in a duffel bag, and toss them to your children so that they may kick them down the street chortling gleefully and praising our godfearing way of life. wait here, it won't take long." then the bastard went out duck hunting with american lives as bullets and came back with a bunchh of ducks. ducks he didn't even share with the kids. he ate the duck with his buddies. so where is all this revenge shit he was speaking before? why do people think that he still cares about them after such a huge impersonal national slap to the face? when's he gonna bring the heads back in a bag?

ain't gonna happen. we all know that. but the suck thing is, that other 'conservatives', the other people who were all fired up about the atttack, they don't care about the world trade center either. and i can prove it to you.

when i found out abouut the world trade center attack, i did not care about the lives that were lost. i was reprimanded at work and almost fired because i jumped up and down for joy when i heard. i then spent the rest of the day trying to tell people who didn't want to really hear why it happened why it happened, because they kept fucking asking. this almost got me fired, and i was told not to discuss politics or 9/11 with anyone, and they were told to do the same. i tell you that so you know where i'm coming from. even though i'm talking about this, i truly care not one whit for the lives that were lost. i do care about the incident itself, but not the people who died. i'm just being real with you.

why do i not care? people die in great numbers all the time. floods. earthquakes, mudslides, Union Carbide, all those things have killed people in far greater numbers and people don't go to pieces about it unless it strikes them personally. i knew from day one that this incident did not touch me personally, but i think a whole lot ov other people pretended it did. a whole hell ov a lot. most ov america. all those disaters all had bigger death tolls and people in america didn't/don't care that much about those situations. why? cuz there's no outrage or outpouring ov fevered emotion that can get your blood pumping. there's just no thrill ov bloodlust to accompany a natural disaster, it just don't seem right. but an attack on god and country, hell yes. add that into the mix and it's easier to pretend those deaths matter.

so, what you get now is a lot ov people being released from the burden ov pretending to care about something they never truly personally did: all the lives lost in the world trade center attacks. if you were to try and argue the point that i just made earlier to a conservative, many ov them would no doubt try and explain off the presidents actions as part ov a greater plan rather than question why he is not doing what he said he was doing; exacting revenge. the underlying reason for this in my mind is that those people did not care then and they do not care now about actual revenge, they just want to justify domination and mayhem for their side's aggrandizement.
the same type ov nationalism that made it easy to rally around a more personal and visible attack makes it easy to do whatever you want to do in the name of promoting your agenda if you give out rewards ov violence and tragedy to what is seen as 'the other team'. actual followup on what you said you were going to do no longer becomes relevant because it's easier to just quit caring about what started it and keep on focusing on the little shit that keeps popping up in your face. it's actually quite sad that we have this type ov nationalism. if we had the kind that actually had brought whoever bomed/flew into the towers(both are possibilities to me) to justice without blowing up a bunch ov irrelevant persons i would personally respect that, even if i did not quite approve. the type ov nationalism that we have though, so poorly rooted in realy person to person unity, is just a very poor excuse for nationalism for anyone but dickheads in power.

don't get me wrong, or at least not too terribly so. i'm not really into nationalism. i think it's stupid to section off humanity like that. but if we're gonna have it, can we at least get some respectable nationalism to fight against? this shit is totally lame.
okay, i done.







Wednesday, August 23, 2006

I'M TOO DRUNK TO POST


i'm wrinting in all caps and everything. thank lord for spellcheck. here's a pic ov me drunk.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Today I started blogging again.

a reference to an obscure song that most ov you would more than likely hate. i don't. i think it's fun and carefree like a teenage girl with a new brand of tampon.


So lately beth has been sick with a new mystery virus that's going around town that's alot like strep throat. no one panic unless that's really your bag, it seems rather harmless. it has, however, rendered beth so weak that our cat lunchbox keeps dragging her to me and asking if she can eat her. fun times, fun times.

more later, but no one knows when that will be.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Friends: How many ov us have them?

friends: ones we can depend on to humilate and ridicule us at every concievable opportunity. friends are good for lots ov things, but the humiliation and ridicule tip is definitely a friend strong point.

the other night i was hanging out at Two Bells with a couple ov lovely ladies and suddenly felt the urge to pee. as i'm not a huge fan ov bladder infections i decided to trot on over to the restroom and correct the problem. two fellows in the bar had the same idea and beat me to it, but one ov them turned back and went and sat down. 'that's odd,' thought me, 'there's multiple stalls.' so i go on in and sure enough find a free urinal and start doing that peeing thing i've been practicing for so long. sure enough, the guy who hesitated and sat down comes into the bathroom at that point, only to find every urinal full as well as the stall. 'sucker,' thought i, 'snoozing=losing!' boy was i ever wrong. this man was a winner!

suddenly there's a flash from behind me and the guy who i thought was waiting runs out ov the restroom and i hear an agonized groan from the stall. 'fucking digital cameras!' he yelled. 'and i had my "unh" face on!' he added. me and the other guy in the bathroom started cracking up. out ov sympathy, ov course. 'by the time you get out there it'll be emailed to at least half your friends,' the guy next to me said in an effort to soften the blow ov the obviously tragic experience. when i walked out ov the bathroom all that guys friends were huddled around a table looking at a picture ov their friend taking a crap and laughing uproariously. now those are friends.

children can be cruel, but it really takes and adult to get it right.

Monday, March 13, 2006

Spam Freestyles

the weirdest shit is showing up in my spam mail these days. instead of american companies putting offers that make some sort ov laughable sense in the body ov my spam messages i'm instead getting these surrealist missives from zaire or hong kong or some such place where spam is an artform. i put a few together and have them below. feel free to send in your own bizzare spams to this very spot. yesiree.

i call this one: 200 MORE SOFTWARES FROM 15-70 ONLY friends.


yours anybody trying,
social promised leader? fascinate respect suddenly?
window wife social night profession. steps window motor back.
suddenly reply news. widow use servants arms later?
back somewhere thus happened speaking.

different next hard. fascinate my tech did fill similar. very end hard.
love force drew young, wrong across raise his edge.
studied across pretty carefully nothing? reading across use.
bad different respect fascinate.
him wanted out is yours? he corner arms wife suddenly. light light light why,

wanted immediate whom widow or whom.
carefully speaking filled across back. the mischievous respect corner. or sandwich benefit,
music black prison. mentioned happened fascinate?
turning letters fire? very similar goes back edge. thus how disappoint few promised.
find how wanted.

Friday, February 24, 2006

the warm red stuff

i'm making sauce, red sauce. saucey sauce sauce sauce. better'n momma used to make, and momma made some damn fine sauce. i'm testing out different styles ov meatloaf for my catering business and i like to serve my meatloaf with a fine red sauce on top ov it with a little mozz. so hence the saucey sauciness what is the sauce what i'm saucing right fucking now. but i ain't sauced, oh no sir. just sassy.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

unwelcome affections


yesterday was valentines day. whoop whoop! that's two big whoops for valentine's day! one whoop for killing trees to express childhood crushes, and another whoop for sugar-induced comas! they're what all the fashionable kids are having on the playground these days. instead ov going either ov those routes myself i opted to just tell my sweetie i loved her and make dinner for her and her mother. it was good. i love to eat dinner.

speaking ov childhood crushes, beth's mom, jo ann, just happens to be the head ov a school over here on seattle's west side. it's called westside school and they get big marks for originality. ANYWAY, as head ov school she gets to recieve valentines from all sorts ov children, from the genuinely nice ones who want to give a valentine to their principal(okay, head ov school) to the ones who were forced to suck up by their parents. she brought several over to us so that we could share in the sugary joy and fantastic penmanship that are the hallmark ov the Hallmark holiday in younger circles. that's when i saw it: the darth vader valentine.

i'd seen them in the stores, the episode III valentines box, and i wondered what type ov 'romantic' messages might be inside, but didn't enough to buy any. well, here was my chance. the outside was fairly innocuous, just 'happy valentine's day' and lucasarts 2006 on the outside, but when you open it up there's a pic ov ol' helmethead himself, Mistah Darth Vader, standing in front ov a sea ov lava with his lightsaber in his hand with the inscription "You have my allegiance."

how cute. this motherfucker just finished stalking through the jedi temple lightsabering the heads ov all the little kids that popped up like some sadistic whack-a-mole game and now he wants to give me his allegiance. what girl wouldn't want that? george lucas needs to stop hanging out with steven spielberg, then perhaps all these attempts at scaring the holy hell out ov children will stop and he can get back to what he's really good at: making his adult fans hang their heads and cry.

i honestly can't imagine a lamer or more inappropriate valentine's day card. wait! yes i can! i'll tell you later. "you have my allegiance?" all i can envision is some smelly and obese fourth grader with a black trenchcoat, a top hat and a ferret passing those cards out to all the cute girls, kneeling before each one and passing it over with head bowed. i want to beat that kid up now so perhaps he'll take fewer beatings in the future.

mommas, don't let your babies grow up to be dorkwads. get them some at least vaguely real sentiments to pass around at school.

on the plus side, it came with a groovy Darth Vader temporary tatoo!

Monday, February 06, 2006

Swattin' Ospreys with an I-Beam

so the gayest sporting event ever is over once again and the steelers won. if you are one ov those people who wants to get all outraged and technical and say the seahawks won, then tell it to the football commissioner cuz i so very much don't care. at least the weather is still nice and i have all ov my limbs and such, some little football game ain't gonna ruin my day. that is the job ov rain and phonecalls from creditors. wish me luck on both fronts.

i am disappointed though. i really wanted to watch the seahawks win, not out ov any adopted hometown pride, but because i read somewhere on the internet that if your home team wins the superbowl, anyone in your town can legally do whatever the fuck they want and not worry about the long arm ov johnny fuckin' law. I was torn, as i usually am, between throwing purse dogs off ov the Denny overpass and shooting SUV drivers along with their demon offspring. i know, tough call. i would have just gone with how the spirit moved me.

the truly manliest display i saw all yesterday was Yeti Vedder, aka Daniel Talsky, eat a warm two pound pile ov lightly spiced and buttered raw hamburger. apparently it grows hair on your chest, cuz he's a fuzzy lil' thang, ain't he?


go play now kids, daddy's got no more drivel to tell you.