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Words to live by?
ARTIST: Clarence E. Quick
TITLE: Come Go with Me
Lyrics and Chords
Ma href="http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/comegowi.htm">Come Go with Me
Dom dom dom dom dom, dom be dooby
Dom dom dom dom dom, dom be dooby
Dom dom dom dom dom, dom be dooby dom
Whoa whoa whoa whoa
/ G Em7 Am7 D7 / : / C7 G /
Love, love me darling, come and go with me
Please don't send me way beyond the sea
I need you darling so come go with me
Come come come come, come into my heart
Tell me darling we will never part
I need you darling so come go with me
Whoa whoa whoa whoa
... / C7 GG7 /
{Refrain}
Yes I need you, yes I really need you
Please say you'll never leave me
Well, say you never, yes, you really never
You never give me a chance
/ C7 - - - / G - G7 - / 1st / D7 - - - /
Come come come come, come into my heart...
{Refrain}
Love, love me darling, come and go with me...
Come on go with me
{Repeat to fade}
... down by the river, down by the river with thee?
...I am bound for the promised land.
Come go with me to yonder valley where we once stood beneath the tree, where we once planned our life together. I can't forget; come go with me....
...but I'm caught in traffic on the Kennedy.
Wait, wrong song. Sorry.
Well, since it's an open thread...
I was somewhat surprised that Wired magizine profiled Alton Brown in the June issue. I'm a self-confessed food geek, and Mr. Brown is the food geek's food geek. I particularly enjoy his use of everyday objects to model the chemical reactions going on on our cooktops and in our ovens.
Given the Sharp Sauce thread, I figured that there may be some food geeks lurking around here who aren't already aware of the genius of Alton Brown and Good Eats. (No affiliation, etc, just a fan.)
Here's a good one
Play "The Innsmouth Look," it's a wonderful love song.
Alex
I was recently taught how to make crepes. The first step is opening a web browser window and doing the appropriate search for "alton brown crepes". (The second step is, of course, following the instructions provided by the first step.)
First thought was the refrain from The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, by Christopher "Kit" Marlowe - as seen in "Shakespeare in Love" :)
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hill and valley, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield ...
But that's "live", not "go" - more settling down rather than continuing on life's journey together. Perhaps they'll share their shoyu
Brooks-- And here I thought crepes grew on vines. When the crepes ripen, the farmers fling them on the ground and stamp on them with bare feet. The results are poured into barrows and allowed to cement into twine.
Which Food Network chef are you?
I, and all my friends who have tried it so far, are Alton Brown. I have good friends.
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree
(and if you're not allergic to bees or beans
you can come and go with me).
My camp meeting background leads me to think it's:
On Jordan's stormy banks I stand
And cast a wishful eye
To Canaan's fair and happy land,
Where my possesions lie.
Chorus
I am bound for the promised land,
I am bound for the promised land
O who will come and go with me
I am bound for the promised land.
O the transporting rapt'rous scene
That rises to my sight;
Sweet fields arrayed in living green
And rivers of Delight.
Chorus
I am bound for the promised land,
I am bound for the promised land
O who will come and go with me
I am bound for the promised land.
There generous fruits that never fail
On trees immortal grow;
There rocks and hills and brooks and vales
With milk and honey flow.
Chorus
I am bound for the promised land,
I am bound for the promised land
O who will come and go with me
I am bound for the promised land.
Soon will the Lord my soul prepare
For joys beyond the skies,
Where never-ceasing pleasures roll,
And praises never die.
Chorus
I am bound for the promised land,
I am bound for the promised land
O who will come and go with me
I am bound for the promised land.
(the cats are ignoring my singing)
I think I'll just stop the watch right here, as this is as good a place to be brakeman as any....
(an allusive way of saying if I get to go along with all you folks, it doesn't really matter which direction we're going, as Mr. Bloch pointed out...)
Which Food Network chef are you?
I, and all my friends who have tried it so far, are Alton Brown. I have good friends.
I am Morimoto. Yay.
(The only problem with the test is that it didn't mention curry.)
Alex
That Hell-Bound Train has always been a favorite, Tom. And I think you would make a fine conductor here.
There's apparently a password-stealing virus going around on LiveJournal. Details here (among other places).
What happens: You see a post that reads "This is interesting" and a URL on someone's LiveJournal. You click on the URL.
This causes two things to happen: First, it posts a message that says "This is interesting" and a URL in your LiveJournal, and second, it installs a password-stealing trojan on your machine.
Yaay, I'm Alton Brown. Which figures. Ask my family. I've often sprung new treatments, though sensible ones (Jim is a meat-a-tarian, Margene has her specific food dislikes...) on them just to get a feedback for something DIFFERENT (dinner way to often for my tastes consists of a piece of meat, a boxed side starch and a two-serving frozen box of vege for Margene and I). So far I've had more pluses than negatives. And I've set My Yahoo to give me an Epicurious recipe every day, which has proved fruitful too.
Yeah, but who's running the dining car on That Hell Bound Train?
And aside from Devilled Eggs, Lobster fra Diavolo and Devil's Food Cake, what's on the menu? That's what I'd like to know...
Balancing out the gourmet food discussion, a version of something I posted elsewhere:
* * *
I occasionally shop at the Grocery Outlet.
It's what friends and family call a "used food store" . . . a kind of rock-bottom place that specializes in obscure house brands, imports, and varieties of name-brand food that didn't make it in the marketplace.
Recently I bought a few items of what I think of as Low Food: Things that are damn odd, with strange, crude labels.
I'm not sure how I'm going to use this can of . . .
"SMOKED SAUSAGE"
http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/prairie_belt_lo.JPG
Yes, the can says "smoked sausage," but these are vienna sausages, the squishy meat cylinders that are the cheapest canned meat product you can buy that doesn't have a picture of a cat on it, or a dog in it.
(Poor Vienna! How did its name get attached to these extruded cylinders of floor sweepings from the Utility Grade Animal Protein Works? A more honest name would be Bum Chow.)
The ingredients include Beef Tripe, Pork Skins, Pork Spleens, Pork Stomachs and Smoke Flavoring. This is the kind of stuff that went into pet food before pet food became a boutique item.
And that kid . . . what kind of hellish poverty has he grown up in, to be so excited about that Service Suggestion of pan-species sausage? (I picture family dinners consisting of ramen noodles and dandelion leaves, and perhaps the occasional small egg when a twister scours the trailer park's trees of bird nests.)
I think this can will go into the rear of the pantry, or in the trunk of my car, for consumption in case of dire emergency. (Say, if Mount Hood blows its top, burying the area in caustic ash that takes weeks to dig out of.)
I *do* know what I'm going to do with this can of . . .
MARVELOUS BROKEN SHRIMP!
http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/marvelous_broken_lo.JPG
I toss these things, and a can of crab meat or minced clams, in clam chowder, turning it into a kind of seafood stew.
"Marvelous Broken Shrimp" kind of sounds like a string of words that might appear in a piece of spam to throw off mail filters.
Hmmm. Spam. Next time I should pick up a variety of Spam Luncheon Meat knock-offs.
Devilled kidneys, with devils on horseback for nibblies
I think the wine list has a range of Fumee Blancs.
I can't read The Passionate Shepherd to His Love without hearing it in 1930's nightclub singer style from Richard III with Ian McKellen.
But my immediate reaction is:
I'm a man without conviction, I'm a man who doesn't know
How to sell a contradiction, you come and go, you come and go...
James D. Macdonald: I am reasonably sure that this LJ worm which you mention does not install any such trojans. I clicked on a link for it (sadly, I have LJ friends who occasionally post bare links with no context), and had it attempted to install such a thing, I cannot imagine Opera would have failed to complain.
The exploit (according to a friend of mine who volunteers in LJ support) is a fairly simple matter of a Javascript redirect that then does a form-submit that mimics what happens when you click submit on the LJ "post new message" page, using the LJ cookie in your browser -- which can, of course, be sent to LJ's servers without raising any security flags. My friend further notes that the official word is that there were no actual security breaches involved in the matter, but in any case things have been corrected in the LJ posting process so as to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future.
O who will come and go with me
Where the traffic backs up on the L.I.E.
Like a patient waiting for his main provider
Let us go, through certain half-deserted suites
And Hugo Loser fêtes
Post-program drops to unfamiliar beds
And sushi restaurants frying ebi heads
Halls that wind past authors wanting news
With the bar as their excuse
And ask about the cover and the edit
In the unforgiving minute
Let us go and say we didn’t.
Weee. Alton Brown. Man's a total geek. All my best nonstandard technique comes from him.
Speaking of which, this week's blockbust came about largely because the person so entranced with the Riddick character from Pitch Black that he wrote fanfiction about him also happened to be the rising action star who played Riddick....
Scary, Mike. I know that moment. It's the one where you're alone in the corridor with the fluorescent lights and the smell of the hotel carpeting, and it comes to you that the pick-me-up-now room service tray which since last night has been sitting outside the door five rooms down from yours appears to be exactly the same room service tray that's languished on the floor five rooms down from yours at the last three conventions you've attended. Downstairs, there's a Meet the Pros party.
"I will arise and go
Where the pink flamingos grow"
The rather cryptic title of a print which hung in the house when I was a child. I always wondered whether it was a quotation but have never managed to trace it.
Yay Alton Brown! I got major kudos from the husband when I gave him a copy of "I'm Just Here for the Food" and a probe thermometer for Christmas. I married the right man.
...and I am born, and free, and dancing in the sun.
Pommes de terre au diable, from The New Orleans Times-Picayune Creole Cook-book--basically fried potatoes dressed with spicy [preferably brown] mustard, with red pepper to your tolerance.
Let us go then, you and me,
When the weekend is spread out for us to see
Like a roommate bombed out of his gourd under the table...
Oh, do not ask, "You said you were who?"
Let us go to the free luau.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of someone who mght be tall and share their enthusiasm for theater.
waaah. marilee gave me a shapenote song earworm. and i can't find an mp3 of that one to get rid of it, either.
Teresa, I don't know if you've run this link before, but a friend gave it to me: http://www.museumgiftshop.co.uk/Application/Products/Bdlp1GB.asp
It connects to a wonderfully decorated map of England that features only genuine weird place names (of which there are many, present and past), produced in the Gloucestershire town of Birdslip.
John M. Ford:
I love your occasional verse!
For the N'York-challenged, L.I.E. = Long Island Expressway. This is a useful acronym. A useless one is painfully heard on traffic reports that say "slow across the G.W. Bridge," because "G.W." has the same number of syllables as "George Washington," and because it leads us to imagine the state funeral for G.W. Bush in contrast to that of Ronald Reagan, who had Wormtongue's way with words...
I'd say that the G.W." versus "George Washington" issue is, not just syllable count (so important to us poets), but an issue of noncompressibility, which is key to Gregory Chaitin's algorithmic approach to randomness. But that makes little sense to the math-challenged. Although Chaitin has a new book, nicely reviewed on yersterday's slashdot. And tomorrow I give my second college-credit highly-illustrated lecture of Math Through Painting and Sculpture, with special emphasis on da Vinci (no code, please), Escher, and Islamic and Asian wallpaper patterns.
Last night I finally saw "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." By FAR the best of the 3 movies; scarier, more magical, better child-acting, better paced, finally giving the film franchise a fight for 3rd best Fantasy Film of all time, behind "Lord of the Rings" and "King Kong," and closing in on "Wizard of Oz." Your opinion?
I was Alton Brown too.
JvP: Your night was spent better than mine. I went and saw the Chronicles of Riddick. The Necromongers looked like Donald Trump doing Goth. And sadly, we can't go see the next movie until my boyfriend gets off his arse and reads the third book.
Er. Can't see the next Harry Potter movie. Not the next Riddick movie.
Come and go with me to a bluegrass place where Bill Monroe plays...(you know it's bluegrass when they use the word, 'yonder'). But be warned, I carry a (plectrum) banjo and I know how to use it.
Come Go With Me
Come go with me to yonder valley
Where we once stood beneath the tree
Where we once planned our life together
I can't forget come go with me
Come let us live some moments over
Then maybe you won't want to leave
I love you then and will forever
I can't forget come go with me
I can't forget the flowers blooming
The rose that I pick for you
Time changed you but I'm not changing
I loved you then and I still do
Come go with me to yonder valley
Where on the largest of the trees
I'll carve your name to prove I love you
I can't forget come go with me
I love you then and I still do
Was bumbling through the net today and I found this link. For those of you who have a somewhat high-profile in certain cities, it might be a good idea for you to sign-up with these folks. (Can't remember where I found the link...either dailykos or metafilter).
In other news, I started training for a half-marathon today by running for fifty minutes straight. I rule!
Rossi Pasta of Marietta, Oh makes Capelli di Diavolo-like angel-hair pasta but HOT. They used to make black squid-ink flavored fettucine,too. Both were devilish looking, and the cdd could inflict punishment if eaten in excess.
There are a number of cool things that can be done with squid-ink pasta (pasta nero), though, unlike red or green pasta, it tastes pretty much like the plain variety -- squid ink is a bit salty, but doesn't have a lot of actual flavor.
So the trick is to find a compatible color of sauce: white clam sauce is an obvious choice, or a really vivid red for the Goth look. And plate color is crucial.
Uh . . . well . . . yeah, of course I was Alton. Though I was kind of surprised, as my answers seemed to be all over the map, and as a cook, rather than a geek, I think I'm more like Vulfgang. And, er, I went out pricing commercial-style home deep fryers the other day, though I didn't actually buy one, and there are other Things With Plugs ahead of it in the queue.
Not far from where I live there is Kitchen Window, a cook's hardware store with a selection that blows Williams-Sonoma out of the saucier pan. Across the street there's a Penzey's Spices, and around the corner is Lund's gourmet supermarket. Many go there . . . few return unchanged.
Lisa, I copied that from one of my shape note songbooks. :) I think I can at least find a midi...
Better, I found a shapenote picture!
http://www.ccel.org/s/southern_harmony/sharm/sharm/hymn/t=The+Promised+Land.html
JVP: Last night I watched the DVD of Magnolias. Netflix has it as a rising star but I thought it was amazingly boring. Then again, I got 7 inches done on the baby afghan I'm working on.
I was Morimoto, but I wish they had an option for Chin Kenichi. I love all the Iron Chefs in one way or another, but he's my favorite. How can you top the teddy bear of Szechuan cuisine?
Oh, and did no one else's brain see that lyric and immediately think:
"O, who will come and go with me,
To live in a pineapple under the sea!"
Just me then? I was afraid of that.
There has been much comment spam today. The links seem to go to disney.com. Since Disney presumably doesn't spam blogs, it makes me wonder what the spammer gets out of it.
In a matter that would seem to be of interest,
A state employee and longtime confidante of Gov. John G. Rowland [of Connecticut] solicited a $32,000 loan from the nonprofit foundation that supports the governor's residence so the governor's wife could publish a children's book, "Marvelous Max, the Mansion Mouse," according to documents released on Thursday by the House committee investigating whether to recommend impeaching Mr. Rowland.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/11/nyregion/11impeach.html
The pitch to use funds from the conservancy was made on Aug. 28, 2002, in a letter from Jo McKenzie, a confidante of the Rowlands who runs the governor's residence, to Mr. Wilde. "Patty Rowland has written a wonderful manuscript,'' she wrote. But, she explained, "in order for us to continue to move forward with this project, we need to ask you and the conservancy a huge favor. We would like to borrow approximately $32,000 from the conservancy's account.''
The outfit that did the publishing is called Norfleet Press. I can find nothing about them other than a couple different addresses and phone nos. It would appear, though, that it's some sort of vanity press--and an expensive one. I think Vantage would have done it for a lot less. Anyone know anything more about them?
waaah. marilee gave me a shapenote song earworm. and i can't find an mp3 of that one to get rid of it, either.
A misreading of the opening line started Chan "Cat Power" Marshall's version of "Sea of Love" ricocheting through my head, but that was a problem more easily remedied.
Okay, how *do* you make hot red pasta?
A friend of mine has been trying repeatedly. His last attempt had two
tablespoons of dried aleppo flake, two eggs, and... however much flour
that takes... and the resulting pasta was not hot. Not when it was
cooked. (The raw pasta was pretty zingy.)
We were half-seriously considering throwing away the flour and making
pasta out of egg and cayenne. Only I don't think that works,
structurally.
Actually, if you make it with eggs and very little flour, you have canneloni (which are really more like crepes than pasta) and they're awfully good.
I wonder if capsaicin (sp? one of the few words I know that I know I have never written out before, and therefore don't have good kinetic spelling knowledge of) is available separately. Surely someone here knows. That would make hot pasta easy to develop....
Tom: You can buy it in capsules at natural food stores.
You can also buy it in liquid form in foodie stories (e.g., Williams-Sonoma). I've seen a brand called Pure Cap and there are probably others.
Andrew, did you saute the flakes in oil? This is how you bring out the flavor.
Tim, fasola.org says all my books are public domain, which doesn't surprise me -- they're very fragile. Maybe I should buy new facsimiles for actual singing.
Andrew - To second Marilee, I'd sautee the pepper flakes at a very low heat, and maybe grind some up and add to the hot oil at the very end.
Not too sure if I'd go for pure cap. Part of the joy of hot foods is the flavor of the peppers, not just the burn.
I'd also let the oil cool off before proceeding, and consider ditching all or part of an egg yolk to manage the fat level. (The egg yolk part is just a WAG. YMMV)
I think you could sing the books without hard copies, Marilee, unless you have less memory than most here! (cheap joke, not intended as anything other than a mild poorfreading humor)
The capsaicin comment was about how to make the pasta hotter. If the flavor's good, added capsaicin seems a good method to increase the heat. I absolutely agree that flavor is the most important criterion for me, but some just want to see the beads on the brow.
I was Morimoto, but I wish they had an option for Chin Kenichi.
Sarah, it's nice to know there's someone else like me out there. I was starting to feel like I was the only one, a Sushi wizard awash in a sea of James Altons...
And yes, I agree, Kenichi is very sexy.
Alex
Was anyone else reminded of the opening to the "Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock"?
"Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;"
Not the best fit, but that's what it reminded me of.
Come and trip it as ye go
On the light fantastic toe.
--Johnny Milton, "L'allegro"
(No, I just like to quote it.)
Yesterday we saw a preview for the movie "A Series of Unfortunate Events". My daughters and I disagree over the series, they like the books and I find them boring. Eldest daughter, 11, said that what she likes best about the books is that the villains are not stupid. Lots of young adult and children's books, she says, portray villains as one dimensional and lead readers to the false assumptions that being a victim is due to stupidity and smart people are never evil.
That the books made her think to that level somewhat redeem them to me.
The evils of the Shrub are about to be eclipsed forever. Ming the Merciless has just been elected to public office here in Ireland!
Today Roscommon County Council, tomorrow the Universe!
My Good Friday evening meal is pasta nero with some minimal flavouring, like a quick grate of cheese & some pepper, a handful of herbs, or steamed greens & a squeeze of lemon juice.
Used to have a pair of octagonal oxblood plates it went rather well on, but the last one was broken in a move. It would go rather well with a red vegetable like capsicum or tomato in a white bowl. Haven't yet found anyone else interested in squid-ink dishes, so it's just for my own amusement.
Warning re capsaicin: Hope y'all know enough to be quite cautious with it - a strong irritant used in what you call "pepper spray" & we call capsicum spray. Don't touch it & then touch anything else, particularly your eyes, before wiping your fingers.
Speaking of films based on sf or fantasy books, I noticed today that "I, Robot" will be starting here soon. I hadn't realised it was that far advanced.
Elijah Bailey & his world is one sfnal creation that's stayed with me despite the many years since I read those books. Has anyone heard about or seen the movie?
Epacris, isn't Lije Bailey from the Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun? Or have the evil Hollywood pixies been munging different storylines together again?
My understanding is that the movie I, Robot is not based on any Asimov stories whatsoever, but is an unrelated story that has had a superficial "three laws of robotics" treatment in order to be able to market it as related to the Asimov robot stories.
I saw the trailer/preview for _I, Robot_. It features armies of killer robots whose eyes turn red when they attack, and many attack sequences, and someone saying how safe the things are, just as one leaps to attack.
There's a story that when the late Isaac Asimov saw the film of _2001_, he said "HAL's breaking First Law!" and his companion said "So smite him, Isaac." The preview made me wish for Isaac to smite them quite comprehensively.
I do not understand the urge to take the name of a classic work and paste it onto a completely different story.
o who will come and go with me
to the university library
and delve amongst dusty tomes
the dog-eared pages of knowledge's home
hark! there beneath a cover that molts,
if indeed covers do molt,
awaits a vision of dissimilatory
arsenate reducing prokaryotes
so please forgive my metre and rhyme
I did not intend this poetic crime
it is only arsenophiles I seek
and will search in the library for at least two weeks
And good morning to all.
Or if you feel really adventurous and don't want to put effort into cooking something try this - make some teriyaki chicken, put that with some nachos (pepper jack cheese, serranos, pineapple salsa - guacamole and sour cream at your own risk but I don't think they'd work with this), now add mandarin oranges, heat, take out of oven, and splash a little soy sauce and some lime on there.
Finish off with some dark coffee and dark chocolate afterwards.
I know it sounds nuts, and it is lazy food, but it is really good to me at least, but then again, I am a student (see ramen haiku).
six for a dollar
malnutrition is on sale
my ramen noodles
I saw this and thought it would make a nice particle for Making Light:
Songs to Wear Pants To plays the Exquisite Corpse game with books and CDs. Here's the MP3: False Impersonation.
Grab a half dozen books at random and write down the fifth sentence on page 23 from each. Now (with eyes closed), grab six CDs at random from your collection. Now compose a song using only these six sentences, where the music for each sentence is in the style of one of the CDs. (If the CD is a compilation or something, use track one.) Also, if you make this song, please list the books and corresponding CDs![BOOKS
1. BENRIK: THIS DIARY WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE
2. CHRISTIAN BÖK: EUNOIA
3. CONSTANCE HALE: SIN AND SYNTAX
4. EDGAR ALLAN POE: COMPLETE TALES & POEMS
5. JOHN SCARNE: SCARNE ON CARD TRICKS
6. E. E. CUMMINGS: ETCETERACOMPACT DISCS
1. THEE MICHELLE GUN ELEPHANT: GEAR BLUES
2. DÄLEK: FROM FILTHY TONGUE OF GODS AND GRIOTS
3. THE BOOKS: THOUGHT FOR FOOD
4. HOOD: COLD HOUSE
5. RÖYKSOPP: MELODY A.M.
6. BRAINIAC: BONSAI SUPERSTAR]
I've seen the trailer for "I, Robot" and I think that everyone involved in the project should be imprisoned for life without parole. Why? Because I'm a staunch opponent of the death penalty, of course.
It not only has nothing to do with Asimov's stories (it uses several of the character names, that's about it - imagine a pretty, young Susan Calvin!) it is exactly the sort of tale the Good Doctor was crusading against. The robots go berserk and start killing everyone. Too bad they didn't kill the script doctors...
Don't give this your money. Let's hope it's a total flop (but of course that won't make them think presenting travesties of good books is a bad idea, just that "science fiction doesn't sell" - no one is better at ignoring reality than Hollywood).
I read one suggestion of boycotting the opening week, because the problems with it are all related to how it is being marketed (who knows whether the story's actually any good?), and opening week figures are what is most important to marketing types.
Oh, by the by, is everyone aware that SCTV Network/90 season 1 is now available on DVD? Apparently, it's been held up for years while they tried to secure music rights. Luckily, they got the rights to Evita, or we'd be denied the sheer comedic spectacle of Indira Ghandi and Slim Whitman singing "Don't Cry for Me, Rawalpindi."
Only 19 cents at Crazy Hy's Video Warehouse, 4653 Landsdown, in Melonville.
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three,
But I, I was the second man,
So you'll hear no more from me.
---L.
About capsaicin, lemme double the comment to handle with care. They call it PEPPER spray for a reason, and the cap-sprays are supposedly far more effective than mace. To paraphrase Alton, getting maced in the kitchen while making your dinner is DEFINTIELY not good eats.
On the other hand, I suppose there's some benefit to a combined condiment and personal protection device. Alton actually suggests non-powdered surgical gloves to handle hot peppers. Rub your eyes accidentally after cutting a habanero and you'll agree.
If you want a more unusual heat, seek out Sichuan peppercorn oil from your Friendly Neighborhood Chinese grocery store. As far as I know, it's legal in the U.S. (vs. the actual peppercorns) and provides mostly the same odd, numbing heat of good Sichuan food. Eating enough of the stuff triggers a pretty serious endorphin rush. I don't think it breaks down as quickly under heat as some of the other hot pepper flavorings, making it more likely to outlast the cooking process.
-- Ed
I was hoping that the SCTV DVDs would start at the very beginning, with the 1/2 hour shows.
Channel 9 in New York used to show those at 11:00 pm Saturdays, right before Saturday Night Live. You just knew that the SNL writers watched, too, because sometimes they stole SCTV's gags. (Like the ad for a mysterious feminine hygiene product that came wrapped in brown paper and was required once each spring.)
In any case, I'm glad the DVDs are out. Remember the episode where a Soviet satellite hijacked the signal, or when cabbage aliens started borging people?
As someone who had to leave the house when Debbie Notkin and I tried to make hot pepper oil by frying some peppers in a wok on a stove without adequate fume-hood:
I thought everyone knew that handling capsaicin with care was important....
Stefan--
I'm not sure why they didn't start with the syndicated ones. Perhaps it's because the NBC shows have the bigger fan base? (Although the half-hour shows have the more dedicated fan base. I could tell stories about staying up 'til 2:00 AM, disconnecting the cable, and wrapping tinfoil around the aerial just to get a snowy picture of SCTV.) A couple of the fansites hinted that releasing future volumes is dependent on the sales for this one, so I'm encouraging everyone to buy. I want them all.
I've watched the first two episodes so far. I've heard some people opine that the show doesn't always age well. I find that things I found hilarious when I was 18 are mildly amusing to me now, but, for example, the Gerry Todd Show had me in convulsions yesterday, and I never much cared for it the first time.
If I had kids, I'd insist that they watch SCTV, the way my dad forced me to watch Ernie Kovacs when PBS re-ran his old kinescopes.
I remember when CCCP-TV stole their satellite signal. I also remember when SCTV was late with its licensing fees, and they had to temporarily replace the feed with the CBC. That was the one with the live curling broadcast, with three color commentators, each of whom was named Gordon.
[Obligatory Simpsons ref:]"Homer, stop remembering TV and get back to work!"
Szechuan peppercorns illegal in the US? Boggle. I've had no trouble buying them over the years. So do I have something dangerous, something that should have been hard to get, a fake, or what?
Also, what are the sources on pepper spray being better than real teargas? That contradicts what I know; pepper spray was invented to get around legal restrictions on the good stuff.
Teresa, you got a shortcut icon!
When did that happen? Verr-eh nice-uh.
I noticed that, too... and agree with Skwid - looks triffically snazzy.
Anyone who knows how to make/insert one care to let me in on the trick? I've wanted one for my site for a while...
Alex, I know what you mean. Almost all of my friends appreciate Alton's geekery over the shiny-uniform showmanship of the Iron Chefs. I like Alton too, but Kenichi, Morimoto, Sakai, Michiba, and even Fukui-san! will always be ahead of him in my culinary affections. Oh, and Chairman Kaga too. Who else could make Liberace look underdressed?
As for "I, Robot".... *shudder.* It reminds me of something I read on Neil Gaiman's site about a script for Sandman that turned the Corinthian into Morpheus' twin brother, the Prince of Nightmares, while relegating Morpheus to the role of Prince of Good Dreams. The two spend the film battling it out superhero-style over the love of a woman.
No, really. That was the script. This sort of thing really makes me wish there were more Peter Jacksons around.
I *did* heat the pepper in a tablespoon or so of oil, and it all went
into the pasta dough. Didn't seem to make a big difference.
I suspect the real answer is "make pasta, cook it, and then toss it
with the oil-and-pepper mixture". But the idea of red, deadly noodles
is aesthetically tempting.
Jill, just google for Shortcut Icon...should be a snap.
"I, Robot" has all the potential to be this decade's "Starship Troopers." Yet another instance of some producer somewhere going "Hey...this script reminds me a lot of that Asimov stuff we bought the rights to a while back...let's change some character names on it and we'll be set!"
And the _I Robot_ movie could be considered good mindless fun -- whose
title had several letters in common with a famous SF novel...
...Except that it's got the same plot, setting, and characters as so
many damn SF movies from the past ten years. Nearly twenty, I should
say. According to the trailer, it's ripping off everything from
_Robocop_ to _Aliens_.
Why bother.
Umm . . . does Janet Asimov have money trouble, or perhaps is just too busy to keep a tab on licensed products?
"I, Robot" strikes me as the kind of movie that {name of author who knocks off lots of novelizations} would knock off a quicky novelization for, rather than the original book being reissued with a snazzy cover. So I don't think it would help the Asimov estate much.
"Come and go, come and go with me, Thomas the Rhymer"
I wound up researching Szechuan peppercorns (Zanthoxylum piperitum) recently. They can no longer be imported into the U.S. because they're a host for a citrus canker. Bums me the heck out. My husband is hoarding our existing stock. See here for details.
Stefan, there's a difference between selling film rights to a property and retaining any sort of creative control. While the alleged adaptation of "Damnation Alley" was in production, Roger told me that he'd heard of the hiring of a "cockroach wrangler," and decided he just wasn't interested in following the project any further. (I don't know if he ever saw the finished movie, though it probably would have just made him laugh.)
There -is- a practical reason for not letting an original creator have any say in the project, and as usual it involves money. The costs of preproduction and a script are so large (last time I looked, the WGA -minimum- for a feature script was about $50K) that even a "big" film sale is modest by comparison. If you give the artist a veto, you can't tell how much it will cost you to implement any changes. And (stop me if you've heard this one) many prose writers really don't know how film adaptation works; they want total literality, which is hardly ever practical, or fixate on particular dear-to-the-heart scenes that may be dysfunctional off the page, or, well, there are a lot of ways not to film a book.
Probably sounds like I'm arguing against creative ownership, and of course I'm not. But it's a devil's bargain at best. If you're insanely lucky, like Mike Mignola, you find a movie guy who loves the work for itself, makes you a full participant in the project, and does whatever he can to get it made right. If not, we all know what happens.
Some particle fodder, here:
John Kerry's high school band actually cut a record.
Personally, from the samples I've heard, I'd recommend he not quit his day job...
The description of the film "I, Robot" sounds to me like someone had seen one of my favourite Dr Who stories, Robots of Death, and removed all the elements from the Who script that actually made it a thoughtful story rather than an excuse for an effects-fest.
I will not be going to see it. Thanks for the warning. :)
Howdy,
David Dyer-Bennet asks: "Also, what are the sources on pepper spray being better than real teargas? That contradicts what I know; pepper spray was invented to get around legal restrictions on the good stuff."
I remembered hearing this a few times during self-defense classes and on a karate mailing list I was subscribed to a few years ago. The first references I can find are in this article here and this one here. Mostly, they center on the fact that mace belongs to an older family of tear gas products which have fallen out of favor amongst law-enforcement types because they're ineffective against attackers under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and can take too long to affect an attacker.
Along the way:
This article on capsaicin, found while verifying whether I spelled it right. Apparently, pure cap crystals require full body suits to handle safely.
This list of Scoville Heat Units, the measure of how hot something is. A habanero pepper has a 100K - 350K Scoville rating, while police-grade pepper spray is rated at 5.3 million Scoville units. Frighteningly enough, there's one food product listed with a Scoville rating higher than that!
-- Ed
I am reminded of what mike weber said when he noticed that a superstrength hot sauce he was using had warnings in case one got it one's skin: "Wait a minute--we don't eat poison ivy."
Hey, wait - wouldn't this be the perfect recipe for paprika?
It might make the dough a little too pasty, but you could always add a quarter teaspoon of gluten.
Today is Flag Day and I wore one of my Vietnam-era buttons (slightly rusted on the back) with a peace sign over a flag. I saved these for mementos, I never expected to need to wear them again.
Skwid - thanks, I started to work on it, but my logo is very hard to reformulate in 16x16...
I have a designer friend who is working on it. If only I had professional help from the beginning (in more ways than one)!
Skwid--Well, considering that John Kerry and his bandmates are emulating such rock'n'roll greats as Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith ("Guitar Boogie Shuffle"), Duane "Have Twangy Guitar, Will Travel" Eddy ("Because They're Young"), Eddie Cochran ("Summertime Blues"), Santo & Johnny ("Sleep Walk"), and the Fireballs ("Torquay"), I'd say that they come off pretty darn well. It certainly rocks harder than any other high school band I've heard. If the campaign hadn't already reissued it, I'd say it would be prime material for, say, the fine Strummin' Mental series of compilations, or Norton Records.
It surely beats the hell out of John Ashcroft's recorded works...
And the Ventures! And the Wailers! Rock on, John!
Oh yeah, that I, Robot movie appears to have about as much to do with Dr. A. as the execrable Red Planet (classic bad line: Val Kilmer: "Fuck this planet!") did with Heinlein.
To counter Mike and Teresa's gloom, I will recollect an essay by Joe Mayhew, in which he discovered that suite C-640 at the DC Sheraton was connected to all Memorial Days at once. I miss Disclave.... (Neat pastiche, though. Sometime I'll rediscover the full-length "Love Song of J. Alfred Techman" and put it where you can all be as appalled as I was.)
Marilee -- is that the version you learned at camp? It's the first Sacred Harp I ever heard, but I keep tripping over a 6/4 version when I go hunting (unless I use the index of first lines, which tells me there are seven settings of that text).
CHip,
This one matches both verse and chorus: The Promised Land, page 128 of the Sacred Harp. It's in 4/4, F# minor.
Drop me a line at walters at doubtfulpalace.com and I'll be happy to mail you a Xerox (hooray for the public domain!).
Or wait, here's a barely legible web image.
John, I wish I could forget Damnation Alley, the movie. BUT i made the mistake of taking my lovely husband, FOR HIS FREAKING BIRTHDAY, to see it. And to add to the verisimiltude, we saw it in a downtown movie theater (now a boarded up hulk) that was infested with roaches (eeeeuw). He will not let me forget my 'good deed.' Alas
The Rossi devil's hair has cayenne pepper and paprika among its ingredients. I am a half-Irish Midwesterner so what's HOT for me may be just moderately warm for others. It's orange.
Andy Perrin: Brooks-- And here I thought crepes grew on vines. When the crepes ripen, the farmers fling them on the ground and stamp on them with bare feet. The results are poured into barrows and allowed to cement into twine.
When I was little, I knew that rubber came (somehow) from rubber trees. So I figured that artificial rubber came from artificial rubber trees.
I was in, what, 4th grade? Yeah, so I was dumb.
CHip, camp meeting, which is not a camp. My parents were fundamentalists and whenever some traveling preacher came through and set up a tent and held camp meeting, we'd go. Lots of singing, lots of hellfire and damnation, and lots of people going forward to repent. It was pretty interesting as spectacle.
That's one of the versions I have in Southern Harmony, which is a shape note book.
It so happens that I was talking today to someone who was involved in the dramatic rights to _I, Robot_. His original idea was to do a miniseries which would adapt the book pretty much as is, with each story getting an episode. But no one wanted to do that, and then the film people got involved, and then it was out of his hands, and now you have whatever travesty it is.
The trouble isn't that everyone in Hollywood is a moron with no respect for literature. It's that any project passes through many different hands, and when the music stops, the morons are often the last one holding it.
I don't know what it is that children like about A Series of Unfortunate Events. It's almost certainly not the same thing I find addictive about them. They defy every Rule of Good Writing I ever learned in the course of my burdensome education. In MFA programs, the use of an exclamation point is a hanging offense, etc. I love the radiant shamelessness of the sentences in The Bad Beginning for the same reason The Prisoner of Azkaban is my favorite of the Harry Potter books--I read and reread that confrontation scene in the Shrieking Shack in which several of the characters not only indulge in exclamation points, but also in italics, and whole paragraphs of speaking in capital letters. I still don't write that way, but it's incredibly liberating to read prose that willfully purple.
Did anyone out there get exposed to Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales for Children? Belloc was the Lemony Snicket and Edward Gorey of my mother's generation. I ask you, how many poets offer young readers spectacle of an exploding pony?
Belloc, Nesbit and Lear -- he wasn't working alone or in a vacuum.
Completely irrelevantly...
http://www.rejoycedublin2004.com/
Coming to Fox this fall..
"My name is Leo Bloom - and the next 24 hours are going to be the most well documented of my life..."
yhl said:
When I was little, I knew that rubber came (somehow) from rubber trees. So I figured that artificial rubber came from artificial rubber trees.
Perfectly logical, but the truth is that artificial rubber comes from the genocide of baby neoprenes.
Andy, you owe me (or my company, rather) a new keyboard.
---L.
My understanding of the situation with the I, Robot movie is that it was a late-in-the-game purchase of rights to a name, and sticking-on of the Three Laws, to a project which had got into trouble with its original name, viz. Hardwired; the logical supposition that suggests is that someone representing Walter Jon Williams objected to it, but I have no information on that.
And surely Belloc, Nesbit, Lear, and Gorey knew of Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann's brain-shattering Struwwelpeter (aka Shock-Headed or Slovenly Peter), a series of 'merry stories and quaint pictures' for children. It was written in 1844, first appeared in English in 1848, and has to be seen to be believed. For instance, try The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb. Oh! Or The Story of Augustus Who Would Not Have Any Soup! Priceless.
The book was apparently a great favorite among children's works in England until a generation or two ago. To me, this explains a lot. Here's a wee history of the book (from the people who turned it into a musical [!]).
I own several of the Science Fiction/Fantasy novels of Eric Temple Bell, although I can't count any as children's literature as such. There are plenty of children, however, who were inspired by his nonfiction, including John Forbes Nash ("A Beautiful Mind"). For more, see the thread "Eric Temple Bell: Math Prof., Sci-Fi author, Liar?" on my blog magicdragon2
I have recently acquired an archive of writings of the brilliant and controversial Eric Temple Bell, dating back to 1932. Based on Constance Reid's book (see blog), he seems to have led a triple life: Math Professor at Caltech, Science Fiction author, and perhaps compulsive liar. You can find out about his most famous discovery (Bell Numbers) at any major Math site, such as mathworld.com. I shall be entering the debate on exactly what he did, when, as revised by my archives. It seems that he had his wife calculating recursive functions on some 1930-era mechanical computer. And it seems that he condemned String Theory decades before it was born!
Heh. I was about to post a link to the story that is now the "It was special just to know him" Particle.
Further investigation, BTW, reveals that the Playmate was not directly involved in the killings, or even particularly the cult. She dated the guy, and dumped him as a loon, thus her use as a witness.
My father used to read us stories from Struwwelpeter. Which may explain a lot.
Little Johnny Head-in-Air sticks in my mind, and someone else who was burned to ashes (much to the distress of her cat) but nothing beats the image of the Great Long-Legged Scissor Man bursting in the door to amputate naughty little suck-a-thumb's offending digits.
Andrew: Congratulations! You've uncovered something that scared the wits out of me at age 5. Damfino why I reacted to Augustus that way....
I have received a virus that was disguised as an e-mail from Jonathan Vos Post. So something is snarfing up addresses here, I guess. In case it helps us to know this.
Did anyone out there get exposed to Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales for Children? Belloc was the Lemony Snicket and Edward Gorey of my mother's generation. I ask you, how many poets offer young readers spectacle of an exploding pony?
I have the Folio Society edition. :)
Noted on BART today - an Air New Zealand ad for their new SFO to Auckland service captioned "Defectors Welcome".
Despite the tongue-in-cheek presentation, I'm sure that the copywriter knew exactly which nerves he was hitting.
Aha! Found a link to a photo of the Air New Zealand ad. Enhanced, SF-style.
erik nelson:
you're probably right. I had an expert clean out my PC less than 2 months ago, and I've been very careful to ensure frequent scourings with the automatically latest updated virus checking, AND there's a firewall.
Today is my first day with the 2 Gigabyte Yahoo email (take that, Google Gmail!), and Yahoo is not utterly virus-free, but probably better than my old Earthlink account, or surely than the old Hotmail account.
So I agree. It look's snarfulent, snarfistic, snarfoidal, whatever...
Jo Walton wrote, re the film called I, Robot:
"I do not understand the urge to take the name of a classic work and paste it onto a completely different story."
Alas, there's an irony here that may not have been appreciated. For taking the name of a classic work and pasting it onto a completely different story is exactly what Asimov did when he published a book titled I, Robot. This had been the title of a then well-known, today forgotten, story by Eando Binder.
I was wandering through the deserted streets
of the now moribund "On the getting of agents"
thread when I got sidetracked by the discussion of
typefaces and their personalities - which reminded
me of a Flash piece done by a graphic artist
ex-workmate of mine:
http://www.lycettebros.com/notmytype/nmt04.htm
There are "Not my type"s I through III as well.
btw - Teresa - when you reply to 'Mike' and
there's nobody signing themselves as Mike in the
thread, is that John M Ford, or is it an imaginary friend thing?
I am in fact Teresa's imaginary friend.
And who would not be proud of that?
Hey, T: how did you find that Amazon housewares thing? I'm continually baffled as to how you find the stuff you find, of course, but that one's a panic.
Mike is indeed my imaginary friend. Creativity is an inexplicable thing, but wonderful.
Did I not credit the Amazon housewares thing? I must fix that. Patrick told me about it.
Ways I find things: 1. Distraction. Diffuse concentration. Good peripheral vision. I sort of trip over things while researching other things. Google is good for that. You type in [herrings "school of'], and it gives you nineteen herrings and a coelacanth. If you're as distractable as I am, you wander off to have a look at the coelacanth. 2. I'll be researching something else, and one of the sources I find will remind me of something else I've always wanted to know more about. This is sort of like the preceding item, but you supply your own coelacanth. 3. Somebody tells me about it. 4. Somebody tells me about something, but when I get there I find myself wandering into another part of the site where I find something else I like better. 5. A day or two after I put up a new post, I go to Technorati to see who's said what about it. I follow the links, and when I get to that weblog there's usually some other interesting stuff. 6. Sometimes I'll take some common turn of phrase and google on it to see what turns up. 7. Some sites, like Ray Girvan's Apothecary's Drawer, have links that are like falling down the rabbit's hole. 8. Miscellaneous other. 9. I'm not sure the foregoing isn't just seven different ways to say one thing, and one way to say another.
Jonathon, don't feel too bad. The fact that a virus somewhere is faking your return address has no correlation with any infection your system may or may not have. I've received viruses with various return addresses I recognize as frequent posters here (and many more I don't recognize). I assume viruses are now harvesting addresses from the web (perhaps by scanning the infected machine's browser cache?) as well as address books and mail folders.
The trouble isn't that everyone in Hollywood is a moron with no respect for literature. It's that any project passes through many different hands, and when the music stops, the morons are often the last one holding it.
Ah, Mob Art. Who was it who said that the intelligence of a mob is the intelligence of its stupidest member, divided by the headcount of the mob?
Sometimes I think all my friends are imaginary.
Sometimes (and this is incomparably worse) I think I'm someone else's imaginary friend. And that that person will grow up, or get therapy, or something, and I'll cease to exist.
Brr.
Saw the trailer for "I, Robot" for t
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