perfidy

I have broken my embarrassing six-month bloggy hiatus (self-imposed due to infant, my job, and my other job, plus the realization that nobody in the world gives a rats' red ass about my "learned" opinions on world affairs) to tell y'all this: I'm famous!

Or at least notable.

Ahhhh, hell with it. This week's edition of the Basic Brewing Radio podcast features a 40-minute interview with yours truly, expanding ya'll's consciousnesses on the topic of capturing, keeping, and working with wild yeast and wild yeast sourdough bread. The brewing connection to baking being, obviously, ancient and fundamental. And delicious.

I might be a fraud, but I'm a very convincing fraud. Download, listen, and learn.

Good nutrition is just as important for the unliving as the living.

Again.

372 French cars torched over "calm" New Year
Tue Jan 1, 6:51 AM ET

PARIS (Reuters) - Vandals torched 372 cars as France celebrated the New Year, down on the figure last year after a night the police described as "relatively calm."

Cars are burned fairly regularly in France and the image of vehicles in flames in poor suburbs became symbolic of riots in 2005 when angry youths set fire to thousands of cars.

...

"The night was relatively calm, without notable incident, there were very few direct clashes with the security forces," said a spokesman for the national police.

At 12:00 a.m. EST, the Interior Ministry said 372 vehicles had been burned -- 144 in the Paris region and 228 in the rest of France. That was down from 397 last New Year's Eve.

...

Well, woot! woot! - 25 fewer cars go under the torch! Pat yourselves on the back, lads.

Ignoring for a moment that if my car were burnt, I'd have trouble thinking of the event as anything other than a notable incident, I'm numb enough to the vagaries of stupid people that the story, and its characterizations, don't shock all that much. The world has become accustomed to this uniquely French method of communication, though it hardly seems as though it was done in the language of love.

Here's the part that made me chuckle, while reminding me of Reuters' predilection for "scare quotes": the way Reuters classifies the story, as inferred from the actual link (http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL01382497) makes clear that they don't buy the gendarmes' characterization that this was no big deal.

If such a thing happened in the US, it would be a big deal, and would represent an actual crisis of some degree. Sadly for the French, events like this are neither a big deal nor treated as any sort of crisis. All of which heightens the absurdity of the sometimes-seen French pretense to superiority, it would seem.

And, oh, yeah, only tangentially related - Happy New Year, all.

Odd, but until now, it hadn't occurred to me that the phrase "editorial oversight" has two potential interpretations.

The first, of course, conveys the stern hand of a Lou Grant type character, ensuring that everything's square and nobody's left his zipper down.

The second, I'm reminded by an article in today's San Francisco Chronicle, is precisely what happens when too little attention is paid to the words that go into a published piece, or when a single word, such as "remaining", is omitted from the piece.

Investigation resumes today into fatal attack at S.F. zoo
Steve Rubenstein,Marisa Lagos, Chronicle Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Police this morning are investigating the sites at the San Francisco Zoo where a 350-pound tiger escaped from its enclosure and attacked three people Tuesday, killing one.

...

Doctors at San Francisco General Hospital said early today that the victims, whose identities have not yet been released, were recovering remarkably well. The men, Dr. Rochelle Dicker told KTVU, are "awake and alert" and in stable condition.

Yeah, except for the dead one, unless he's no longer considered a victim.

And further down, this bit of a description on the last time a tiger went apeshit at the SF Zoo:

On Dec. 22, 2006, the 350-pound Tatiana chewed the flesh off Lori Komejan's arm during a public feeding demonstration.

"And that, kids, is what it actually looks like when a tiger eats. Any questions?"

All small beer, I realize, but I've not experienced this much cognitive dissonance while reading an article in quite some time. Which might say more about me than it does about the Chronicle, but in this case, I think not.

This morning, not 30 minutes ago, I helped a nun up a flight of stairs.

The facilities people who clear the snow-n-ice didn't clear the steps to their edges, meaning that she couldn't reach a handrail. Poor thing didn't want to risk going up unsupported, which is entirely understandable as she is just this side of 90. I happened to walk out when she needed a hand coming in, so there you go. I also confided to her that I almost took a digger this morning on my very own steps, so as not to let her feel any more frail than she already might.

So here's my question: which specific act of evil in my long career of prickiness might now be negated? It seems that in life's equation, I just got a +1 that ought to cancel a -1 somewhere else.

Maybe I can be made right with Vishnu for all the ants I torched with a magnifying glass. Maybe I can even get off the hook with the little green plastic god that oversees little green plastic army men; lord knows he'd want a piece of me. Then again, what if G-d is a god of war and conflict, for which there is a fair amount of evidence. This act today, then, might actually bring me backwards.

I know you've all been holding your breath for this one...the Top Ten Best Quotes of 2007. This is your opportunity to play trivia and see if you can remember the circumstances behind each one, so phone the neighbors and wake the kids.

1. "Don't tase me, bro!"

2. "I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and Iraq and everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for us."

3. "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country."

4. "That's some nappy-headed hos there."

5. "I don't recall."

6. "There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11."

7. "I'm not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody who has a 9 percent approval rating."

8. "I have a wide stance when going to the bathroom."

9. "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."

10. "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history."

Find out who said what and why here.

WHERE DID THE WHITE MAN GO WRONG ?

Indian Chief, 'Two Eagles', was asked by a U.S. Government Official, "You have observed the white man for 90 years. You've seen his wars and his technological advances. You've seen his progress and his mistakes."

The Chief nodded in agreement.

The Official continued, "Considering all these events, in your opinion, how has the white man done?"

The Chief stared at the government official for over a minute, and then calmly replied. "When white man find land, Indians running it. No taxes. No debt. Plenty buffalo. Plenty beaver. Clean Water. Women did all the work. Medicine man free. Indian man spend all day hunting and fishing... all night having sex."

Then, the chief leaned back and smiled: "Only white man dumb enough to think he can improve system like that."

Does anyone in the Ministry circle care about the shocking, *shocking* revelation that the comically bemuscled 45-year-olds who were breaking records were hormone junkies?

If so, why?

Lots of people in this country see our President as, um, not too heavy in the brains department. I don't disagree with that assessment. But apparently he's smart enough to have learned the lesson known by fat people for years, which is that if you want to appear thinner, surround yourself by people fatter than you.

And if you want to appear smart...

Well, just be glad there wasn't anything nuculer involved.

I had organized the first annual Ministry Million Dollar Carnival.

It was a large-ish, open-air affair with all manner of booth, contest, and confection. I was walking around the carnival, half-surprised that everything had gone off as planned. There were legions of people in attendance, and all appeared to be having a good time. Even the weather was nice. Well, nice according to the aesthetic of most folks.

So after a bit of all this, someone...I'm not sure who, but someone from the Ministry circle...might've been a Minister, or possibly Murdoc...came over and pointed out that we don't have a million dollars to give away, or even a million dollars' worth of merchandise; the whole thing was basically a sham. I thought that was odd, and started to argue that that was entirely irrelevant, but decided to finish out-processing from the Marine Corps instead.

As a former soldier I *have* had dreams about people I knew and units I was in, but I never once dreamed of being in another service branch.

So I walked over to the admin building and found myself explaining to a retention officer why I wanted to leave the Corps. As I recall now, it was a famous actor...Jeff Goldblum, maybe?...who was the officer in question. I said that I had done my time and it was just time to get out, to move on, that sort of rap. We finished the paperwork, shook hands, and I walked out to join a waiting expedition to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.

We made the summit in rather short order, only to find that the peak was actually just level with a little, scrubby city and the fact that it is among the largest natural features on the planet really is just an accident of relative observation and associated physics. In short, after cresting the mighty mountain I was rewarded not with an astonishing view of Earth's grandeur but an eye-level view of a rather shabby and dark empty parking lot that I could step onto from the peak.

So I looked around a little, but went back to our camp just short of the summit and told everyone what the deal was. Then I noticed that my cat had actually followed us up the mountain and was being a pain in the ass in the tent, so I bitched at him for a bit.