perfidy

As we await... and wait... and wait... the arrival of our characteristically stubborn firstborn, who is holding onto his cushy life in the womb like the last Japanese regular fiercely defending his little patch of Iwo Jima in late 1948, refusing to accept that history has moved on, I finally convinced my patient and loving wife to show me how to make the ethnic food of her Pennsylvania hill-country home.

Possum.

Naw, I'm just shining you on. Up in the hills of Western Pennsylvania, in the countless factory towns that line the Allegheny and the Kiskemin...Kiske... the Kiskesomethiwhatsit River, everyone eats pierogi. Originally brought to the area by the Slavic, Polish and Ukrainian immigrants of the early part of the last century, they have since transcended ethnicity to become the soul food of the region. Well, them and the cabbage-and-noodle dish known as haluski, but that's a recipe for another day.

Sadly, with the passing of all the grandmothers born before the war, good pierogi is increasingly hard to find. These days, their daughters and granddaughters have jobs, and the old parish kitchens where women would gather every Friday to gossip and make pierogi have all but vanished. It's a dying art in a dying region.

And so, a nice project for a rainy afternoon: Pierogi. (Makes about 6 dozen dumplings)

• 34 ounces (8 cups) all purpose flour
• .68 oz (2 1/2 teaspoons) salt
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• 10 oz (1 1/4 cups) water, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup butter, softened

BY HAND:

Place flour in a large bowl and whisk in the salt. Add eggs and water and butter and mix until rough. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead just until all ingredients are combined and homogeneous, and the dough is smooth and silky - about 3-5 minutes. Do not over-miz as this dough needs to be plastic (extensible), not elastic (will snap back).

BY MIXER: Alternatively, combine all ingredients in bowl of stand mixer. Mix with paddle attachment until roughly mixed, and then switch to the dough hook and mix on low speed for no more than 2-3 minutes or until dough is homogeneous, smooth, and silky. Do not over-mix as this dough needs to be plastic (extensible), not elastic (will snap back).

BOTH METHODS: Make and cool your fillings as the dough rests, or have them prepared and ready.

• Minced mushrooms sauteed in oil with a little onion, garlic and salt
• Plain sauerkraut (I use my parent's homemade)
• Sauerkraut combined with the above mushrooms (YUM!)
• Mashed potato with sauteed minced onion and garlic, seasoned with salt and pepper and a tiny dash of nutmeg
• The above potatoes plus gouda, smoked gouda, or cheddar
• Ricotta or cottage cheese, with a little salt and pepper, plus optionally some paprika
• Leeks sauteed in butter with a little garlic (to make the ravioli that the Afghanis know as "aushak")
• Winter squash baked with sugar and cinnamon
• Winter squash baked and combined with a little garlic and sauteed leeks
• Pureed peas with mint, salt and pepper
• Blueberry or blackberry preserves, with ricotta or cottage cheese

Roll out the dough in batches, taking about a baseball sized lump at a time. Roll each iteration on a lightly floured surface until it is approximately 1/8 inch thick. Using a large biscuit cutter or the end of a large (20 oz) tomato can (or a 14 oz can if you desire, though this smaller size is more difficult to work with), cut out rounds from the dough. You may re-roll any scraps once only, before they get too dry and too tough to use.

(Although it is surely heresy to say so, I strongly recommend you buy some frozen commercial pierogi (for example Mrs T's) if you need to be reminded of the proper shape, size, and thickness. Homemade tend to turn out a bit thicker, which is not a bad thing at all, but you want to avoid making your dumplings too doughy.)

Depending on the size of cutter you use, place between 2 teaspoons and 1 heaping tablespoon of filling at the center of a round of dough - enough for a nice bite of filling. Fold the round over and crimp edge to create a sealed half-moon. You may use a moistened finger on the inside edge of the pierogi if you've having trouble getting them to seal. Optionally, you may crimp each sealed edge with a fork to make them look pretty. There should be about 1/3 inch to 1/2 inch of crimped edge when you're done, to ensure a good seal.

Place individually on lightly floured wax paper on baking sheets, making sure the pierogis do not touch. As you fill each pan, lightly flour the tops of the pierogis and cover the sheet pan with plastic wrap.

Cook fresh in boiling water until the pierogis float.

Alternatively, place each pan of pierogis in the freezer for at least 45 minutes before removing in layers separated by wax paper to labelled freezer bags or containers. I like to freeze in batches of a dozen.

Cook frozen pierogis in boiling water for about 5 minutes or until they float.

Serve tossed with onions sautéed in butter until soft, salt and pepper. Sour cream and applesauce are essential accoutrements to most traditional variations. The squash and pea versions proposed above would be nice with a lamb or pork roast. The cheese and berry versions are unsurpassed drunk food, especially if you happen to have a deep fryer in your home.

Apparently Google works, because some enterprising soul found a two-year old post of mine about infusing vodkas and had some questions about the construction of cayenne vodka. Well, Drunkle John is here to help!!

Amelia S. writes:

> Hello,
>
> I read your blog post from a loooong time ago about making infused vodkas. Apparently, you have cornered the online market for cayenne pepper vodka recipes. I grew some cayennes this year and want to make vodka, so I have a couple of questions for you:
>
> 1) If I only used a single cayenne, do you think that would tone down the heat?
> 2) Just out of curiosity, what do you think would happen if I left the pepper in the bottle permanently? I ask because I think it would be pretty. But, perhaps, deadly.
> 3) How did your ginger, orange, cranberry, and poblano vodkas turn out??
>
> Loved your post. Will probably link to it in my blog soon enough. :)
>
> - Amelia

Hi Amelia -

If you were to do just one pepper and leave it in the bottle permanently, I doubt anything bad would happen, and it would be pretty. But for cayenne vodka, I would recommend putting more than one pepper in, because cayenne flavor is a little one-dimensional and my suspicion is that one pepper only would give you heat but little pepper aroma or taste.

To tone down the heat and let some of the pepper character come through, you would probably want to remove the seeds and the inner membranes from the peppers before infusing - that means the seeds, the white pith, AND the very thin layer of whitish-pink veined flesh on the inside of the pepper. The skin and the deep red flesh are where the flavor and aroma are, but there's still some heat there. If you find that the resulting infusion lacks the desired punch after a week or two, put in another whole pepper with seeds included, and sample daily until the desired pain level is reached.

But know this - capsaicin is much heavier than ethyl alcohol or water and tends to sink to the bottom of the bottle. No matter which way you go, shake the bottle before each serving or that last couple ounces is going to be undrinkable.

As for my crazy experiments, the poblano wasn't too great - poblanos have a grassy character that dominated, without giving too much heat. Next time I will probably use seeded and de-veined habaneros. The ginger was merely OK - it takes a surprising amount of ginger to impart a distinctive ginger character to vodka. The cranberry was pretty good - a beautify ruby hue (the fruit came out of the infusion pallid and flabby - it really gave up a lot of character) with a nice tartness. The orange was extremely successful, a beautiful color with a lot of orange character.

If you're going to infuse vodkas, I'd recommend not doing what we did, which is to buy the cheapest stuff we could get and then try to filter out the heavier molecules that impart harshness. Despite good initial indications, it only works so well and the cheap vodka doesn't mix as well as even midrange hooch. Instead, get a decent bottle of grain vodka - a midrange one like Gordon's - and use that. The base hooch really ought to be drinkable on its own.

I haven't tried infusing in a while, and you remind me that I've been meaning to try a spiced vodka with cinnamon, green cardamom, clove, allspice and maybe just a tiny bit of cumin. Now I have a project! Thanks!

Hope this helps, and good luck!

Drunkle Johno

Patton has accused me of being overly concerned about wasting a scarce natural resource. The category tag. In this, of course, he is completely wrong. Naturally, I could have argued that over-categorizing a post dilutes the utility of tags. And I would have been right. But that wasn't the point. I was attacking him on aesthetic grounds, and just to stick a stick in his eye.

Just to prove that I am not some sort of homo-tree-hugging-enviro-commie, this post, which really is about everything, is tagged with every category we have. And, when I have a free moment, I'll add some new categories, and add them to this post.

So there.

If you're not reading The Pour, food and wine writer Eric Asmiov's blog on wine, spirits, and food for the New York Times, you're missing one of the country's leading thinkers about the good things in life, mulling over the finer points of his chosen craft from the bottom of a glass. Great, great stuff.

And, hey. If you're not "into" wine," or think beer is always at its best icy cold and mostly tasteless, then... shit. Read a little Asimov and learn something you didn't know. No pressure. But like that great drunkard So-crates said, the unexamined glass is not worth drinking.

Those who know me well know that I'm fairly flexible on matters of language. Go ahead, say "ain't" or write a double negative. I don't care all that much unless the context calls for precision. Coin a word! I do it all the time! (I'm personally very proud of "libervasion," as in "Five years in, the libervasion of Iraq has yet to draw to a favorable close for the USA.")

But what really burns my bacon is people who consistently fail to realize that two homophones are different. Case in point: Marshal, and Marshall. One denotes a person of high or ultimate rank in an organization, like Field Marshal or Fire Marshal. The other is a proper given name, like Marshall Mathers or Marshall Fauk. When everyone from high-school dropouts to tenured faculty, plus the guys who enter the scrolling headlines on major news networks, consistently write "Fire Marshal" as "Fire Marshall" I go a little nuts inside and wonder which Marshall it is who has fucked up so badly that his ass needs to be fired on the afternoon news.

That is all.

[wik] (Now, if was "Fire Alberto" or "Fire The Stoner Who Took Two Hours To Deliver One Freaking Mushroom Pizza Light On The Mozzarella To My House And Couldn't Even Put Together A Better Response Than To Cut His Reddened Eyes Away From Me And Mutter "Sorry If It's Late" ("Sorry If It's Late?" You Disingenuous Tool? We Both Know You Were Somewhere Doing Bong Hits, That's Fine, Just Don't Pretend You Don't Know What Goddamn Time It Is When A Stone Cold Pizza Arrives At My House In A Cloud Of Resinous Smoke)" then I'd understand. But Fire Marshall? That poor bastard was just doing his job.)

JohnL, the proprietor of Texas Best Grok, has found hisself a coblogger. And this seems to have upped the posting frequency a bit. The new addition, Planet Stories, provides some insight into the mind of the engineer:

Understanding Engineers: Take Four

What is the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers? Mechanical Engineers build weapons and Civil Engineers build targets.

Understanding Engineers: Take Nine

An engineer was crossing a road one-day when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess." He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week." The engineer took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket. The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I'll stay with you and do anything you want." Again the engineer took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket. Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter? I've told you I'm a beautiful princess, and that I'll stay with you for a week and do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?" The engineer said, "Look, I'm an engineer. I don't have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog, now that's cool."

All true. I remember back in my sordid youth, I spent a lot of time in bars. One night, I was hanging out at Larry's Bar, Grill and Seminar of Lower Woodruff Avenue, and a pair of charming and attractive women joined me at my booth. We fell to talking and it turned out that one of the two was an engineer - specifically, an engineer working in the environmental field - dealing with toxic waste and whatnot.

"Cool!" I said. "One of my best friends does that too. Let me call him, and invite him over." So I called my friend (let's call him Dave) and said, "Hey, there's a hot Macedonian chick over here who's an environmental engineer. Stop jerking off and come over to Larry's." And so he did.

Now, the conversation continued. I learned that Emily (or so we'll call her) was by training a Civil Engineer, but at the time I thought nothing of my friend Dave's deep and abiding hatred of civil engineers. Nothing whatsoever. About twenty minutes later, Dave arrives, and flops bonelessly into a chair at the end of the booth. "Rough Day?" I asked.

Dave mimed putting a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. "I fucking hate civil engineers."

"Dave, this is Emily. She's a civil engineer."

Panic. "I, uh, fucking hate civil engineers that I work with. That's what I meant to say."

Dave didn't mention that he, as recently as the week before, had said in confidence that civil engineers were people who failed out of all the real engineering disciplines. "How hard," he asked, "is it to get water to run downhill?"

Of course, Dave blamed me for not warning him that Emily was a civil engineer. Now I ask you, am I responsible for Dave's engineering bigotry? I think not, but it was certainly fun watching Dave preface a disparaging remark later with a question to the two young ladies - "None of y'all are from Texas are you?"

Decision making is fraught with risk. Will our choices be to our benefit, or will things go awry? When the stakes are high, sophisticated aids to planning are needed. Historically, important choices have been left to traditional oracular methods, such as flipping a coin. The binary limitation on outcomes proved a hindrance to the wide scale adoption of coin flipping in complicated situations.

Advances in technology over the centuries improved decision-makers options. The invention of dice, first in the simple cubical six-sided form, and later in diverse polyhedral forms, allowed for choosing between as many as twenty or even fifty outcomes. The problem here, of course, was making the list of outcomes. Perhaps the ultimate advance in this form of decision aid was the introduction of the Magic 8-Ball, which provided graduated responses to a single question.

However, these methods allowed for a only single decision maker. Technology had left choosing between leaders far behind. Voting, the best solution for millennia, was cumbersome and time-consuming. When two people needed to choose between them, voting was impractical. Other methods (typically adaptations of single-leader methods and dependent on chance and probability) were often less than optimal for situations which required a leader to win, not merely be the recipient of the blessings of the laws of probability.

Trial by combat was often resorted to, to be sure, but this often left the loser incapacitated. What was needed was a bloodless, strategic, quick, portable and trusted method of determining a winner.

For centuries, that method was rock-paper-scissors. Rock-paper-scissors (RPS) was so dominant, for so long, that few had the temerity to question it even in the smallest particulars. However, certain weaknesses had become apparent over time. Most notably, the frequent ties that were a necessary side effect of having only three options. Nevertheless, the psychological power and strategic possibilities seemed endless.

While some engaged in pointless revisionism (Pirate-Cowboy-Ninja; Cat-Foil-Microwave), in the free-wheeling seventies, some daring souls expanded the sacred trinity of RPS to five, in the hopes of mitigating, if not eliminating, the problem of repeated ties in Rochambeau. The new version was called Rock-Paper-Scissors-Spock-Lizard, or RPSSL.

In the way of things in these modern times, five was not enough, and a good idea was run straight into the ground.

The result is RPS-25.

The advantage here is that ties are almost never going to happen. The disadvantage is memorizing 25 hand gestures and their 300 possible outcomes. A sample of the madness:

Click on the picture for all the outcomes and gestures. Or go here for a flash instantiation of the concept.

[wik] Of course, that wasn't enough. And now we have RPS-101.

Call me anachronistic, but I use a real dictionary to look up words.

I like the internets as much as the next guy, but still prefer, more often than not, the look and feel of a solid dense bit of bookery in my hands. It means authority, and presence, and presents language in a more permanent and, I daresay, reassuring way than do bits and pixels.

Mostly. I just noticed that my dictionary is a relic of a bygone age. Not the age of print and type, but the age when terrorism had to do with Them, not Us.

I was looking for a word and happened upon a small picture in the margin that caught my eye: a tiny black and white photo of Manhattan, including the Twin Towers, associated with the definition of "skyline". About three inches down is another pic, a little larger, of just the towers and labeled "skyscraper". Also in the same corner of the page: skyjack. And sky marshall.

Dammit, David Halberstam died. He was one of the finest reporters - and finest writers - of his generation, and he will be missed.

(I imagine we can expect a story from Christopher Hitchens within the next day or two about how Halberstam was really a second-rate hack who slew children to collect their shoes.)

In honor of the International pixel-stained technopeasant day, many people are posting stuff for free on the internets. One of my favorite sf authors, Charles Stross, has posted his award-nominated novella "Missile Gap" in its entirety, over here. Missile Gap is deeply creepy, and... nevermind. I recommend it highly. Go read. Right now.

Found in Friday's WSJ (4/13, subscription req'd):

The WSJ has a regular section of the paper dedicated to houses I wouldn't want, in places I wouldn't live, at prices I can't afford. They're always adjacent to full page advertisements from Coldwell Banker or some other house-hawker, so perhaps there's an editorial synergy at work.

The story right before the one about Snoop Dogg's home, for instance, detailed a $125 million listing for a 45,000 sq. ft. estate called "Fleur de Lys", being sold by a 46 year old divorcee you've never heard of, formerly married to a man you've never heard of, who started and sold a company you've never heard of. The last line of that listing editorial masterpiece was this:

Joyce Rey, head of Coldwell Banker's Previews division, and Robert Kass of Windermere Real Estate have the listing.

So I'm going out on a limb here, and assuming that each of the stories had its editorial birth in a call directly from a listing agent to Ben Casselman at the WSJ, or someone else who works in the pretend-editorial department for the "Weekend Journal" section.

With that lead-in, I'd like to highlight a portion of the otherwise garden variety article Mr. Casselman produced. It seems that Calvin Broadus, a/k/a Snoop Dogg (or would that more properly be "Snoop Dogg, a/k/a Calvin Broadus"?) has put a house on the market. Blah, blah, blah - sounds like a nice enough place, at something like a normal price for Southern California real estate these days.

As before, I presume the story came from the listing agent, though s/he was not named in the article. Here's the description they included in the article for Broadus, the seller:

The rapper, 35, has sold nearly 19 million albums in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan, and has appeared in several films. (He's also known for popularizing the suffix "izzle.")

That, plus he was sentenced earlier this on weapon and drug charges for some earlier, and unimportant to this story, infraction.

Am I the only one who thinks it odd that (if as presumed) the listing agent who provided the story thought it was important to the story to enlighten us all that he is known for the suffix "izzle"? More important than the drug and weapons charges?

Yeah, I'm probably the only one.

[wik] I can just picture, 30 years from now, Calvin Broadus, talking to some kid somewhere, and saying "'izzle? Yeah, that was mine."

[alsø wik] I can picture some kid, 30 years from now, hearing something like that and laughing his ass off.

Found on Digg Spy, as the most intelligent comment on a story entitled "Tom Hanks signs on to Angels & Demons for Record Payout?".

Now, mind you, it came after a bunch of comments about how Angels & Demons was far superior to the Da Vinci Code. Which is absurd, as it's like comparing runny shit to smelly shit. Who knows which was actually worse? Who cares? They both (the books, not the types of shit) served a purpose, namely to be throw-away airport reading purchases, which is precisely how I came to read them both.

Anyway, the comment linked above, from Dumbledorito, reads, in its entirety:

A&D has a plot so linear you could put your eye out with it. Plus, it has an antimatter bomb (WTF?) and will probably piss off even more Catholics. The ending was more improbable than the Pope having been a former ping-pong champion, and lastly, if you're going to make a movie about the Illuminati, it should be based on the works of Robert Anton Wilson.

Sorry to rant. I just didn't care for it. It was also another "scholar wet dream" film as the bookish nerd-professor gets the hot chick thanks to his esoteric knowledge of an obscure subject.

Yeah, like s/he said.

Interesting. In a poll of over 3000 sf fans by sfx magazine, Serenity was voted the best sf movie of all time, over second place Star Wars. I dug the movie, but I don't know if I'd rank it in first place. The whole list:

1. Serenity
2. Star Wars
3. Blade Runner
4. Planet of the Apes
5. The Matrix
6. Alien
7. Forbidden Planet
8. 2001: A Space Odyssey
9. The Terminator
10. Back to the Future

Since last week I've been getting a little nostalgic.

When I get this way- typically an annual event- I would post something maudlin about my soldiering days, and the good times and the high adventure (or what passed for it in Cold War Bavaria) and the lost opportunities that can put me in a days-long funk if I dwell on them. A recent article in Stars and Stripes about the few remaining US casernes in Germany, casernes that I once knew well, might have been enough to do the job. I mean, imagine your college, for example, which you were anxious to leave yet to which you grow more attached over time; where you learned hard lessons about, well, everything- chicks, drugs, booze, probably some art, literature, cars, debt, dealing with pricks- lessons that could only be learned in that place. And then imagine that your cherished alma mater is being sold and will never again be yours. It can be tough.

And you know, I did get nostalgic. A little.

But instead of the cloying post about lost innocence, leavened with the cynical asshole-ishness characteristic of much of my writing, I got to thinking instead about other things that are gone, in a sense, yet still remain. I got to thinking of music in that way, probably because of recent Ministry musical postings, and that brought me in turn to what Johno once deemed "chronological vertigo".

Chronological vertigo is the appreciation of timespan between a chosen point in spacetime and the present. But it's much more than understanding what a decade is, or a century, or a lifespan, or any other stretch of consecutive elapsed time between two points. It is understanding, even feeling, the relationship between that elapsed time and today; between then and now.

Consider some musics that are 30 this year: Kill City; Decade; Animals; Never Mind the Bollocks... The distance between those records' release and now is nearly the same as between them and the end of WW2. Next time someone mentions the Sex Pistols, consider that they are the halfway point between now and VJ Day.

Or what about Star Wars? The original is 30 years old now. If you were thinking about movies that were 30 years old while you happened to be waiting to see Star Wars, you might be thinking about The Secret life of Walter Mitty, or any of a dozen crummy westerns. But look- the difference between the release of Star Wars and today is probably longer than it was between the establishment of the Empire and the umasking of the Sith Lord, until the destruction of the second Death Star and the establishment of Endor as a martial power.

Think about *that*.

I've started using this tool to generate names for the beers I make. In fact, just last weekend I kegged a batch of Paul Newman's Portentious Sharks With Fricking Laser Beams Tied Their Heads Pale Ale, and it's positively delish!

Hm. I'm flaming today. Fascinating.

Anyway, here is the recipe I used:

5 lbs light dried malt extract
1 lb wheat dried malt extract
1/2 lb Crystal malt 60L
5 oz lb Crystal malt 135L
1 oz northern brewer hop pellets
2 oz Crystal hop pellets
SAFbrew #33 dry yeast - 2 packets
Nature's Pride Spring Water

Steeped grains in 1 gal water at 140-160 degrees for one hour. Sparged in 3 gallons of water heating in brewpot. Added steeping liquor. At boil added both DMEs and Northern Brewer.
At -40 added 1 oz crystal hops
at -15 added 1 oz crystal hops
at -1 added 1 oz crystal hops

Removed to ice bath and cooled to 90 degrees in 30 minutes.

Added about 2 gallons cold spring water to carboy and placed near open door to keep cool (during which I forgot to attach the airlock to the carboy, risking contamination of the beer). Strained wort through funnel, with again plenty of opportunity for contamination. Added water to make about 5 1/4 gallons. Pitched dry yeast with the last water addition at about 60 degrees- very low.

[wik] Despite the numerous opportunities I gave everything to contaminate, nothing bad happened; just a nice vigorous fermentation at 68-70 degrees. I let everything sit for about two weeks in the carboy, and kegged directly from primary. I used Munton's KreamyX (which sounds so DIRTY!!) to prime this batch, because I want a nice thick creamy head. (That's what she said! (haw!!))

[alsø wik] In all honesty I was going for a brown ale on the lighter side of the style with a serious hit of hop flavor and aroma without much bitterness. What I ended up with was a dark pale ale with a noticeable but tasteful hop presence. In fact, it tastes almost exactly like Ipswich Pale Ale, which fellow New Englanders will recognize and a very fine example of the style. So, what the hell. It's just beer.

[alsø alsø wik] Speaking of beer, I now have portions of five batches of homebrew in my basement, making a total of approximately 18 gallons. My wife is pregnant and thus is no help; I can no longer fit in my pants what with the constant "sympathy-eating" I'm doing. So, I beg of you, all of you-- please come to my house and drink all of my beer. I'll make more!

Ok. We all know that I'm THE seething ball of estrogen here at the Ministry, but you'll have to indulge me my girlish shrieks over the star of Shaun of the Dead, Simon Pegg. I saw him LIVE AND IN PERSON not 5 feet away from me on Friday night. No. I didn't rugby tackle him down asking him to marry me, but he wasn't much bigger than me. I could have done it if there weren't a table and some chairs in the way.

This weekend I saw a sneak preview of Mr. Pegg's new film, Hot Fuzz. I absolutely adore Shaun of the Dead and have a right dead crush on our hero, Nicholas Angel. After all, he can leap fences like nobody's business, and the handspring stunts in the greenhouse, set my heart a flutter. Two gun, Johnny Woo action with Nick Frost. It's more than a girl can bear. Yes, he's a twit. A fascist adherent to the law, but the film is hilarious.

In a word, BRILLIANT.

It will be opening in the US soon. Meanwhile, any of you minister lads have his original show, Spaced on DVD?

Via Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings, the greatest student complaint ever recorded. Just a taste:

I appreciate you taking your inconvenience to instruct us but I really had some problems in your class and I would like to explain them to you now. Every day I wanted to discuss with you about the way you grade my papers and the way you teach the class, but I could not because the things you say in class and your words disturb me so much I can not. You make me completely uncomfortable with the little things you say in the class like how you talk about television or how you talk about when you are grading our papers and trying to be fair. You do not seem to care about our grades only that they are up to your too high standards and I can not talk to you because you make me completely uncomfortable. For example, you say you will talk to us about our grades but you really will not because of how uncomfortable you make me feel with your words and what you say.

I will plan to contest the grade you have given me in this class when I get it because I know it will be much higher with any other teacher. I am a very religious man and you are not a bad person but you do not choose your words with enough care like a teacher should. You try to be objective and the very attempt becomes your flaw because you try so hard to grade fairly and comment wisely that you become biased to your own ideas. You criticize our writings because we are college students and young but do not realize that you offend most of us when you do this. I am always offended when I go to your class and have been on many occasions but I never tell you of my offense because you make me completely uncomfortable so I never say a word.

--snip--

I am a very religious man and I love every one but I will forward this letter to the head of your department so he can see that I am a serious student who does not deserve the grade you will give him because I write so very well.

According to the person who shared this partially redacted note (so as to protect the innocent), the writer of this missive, who writes so! very! well! is indeed a native speaker of the language, indeed one whose background suggests access to the very best schools. So, any lack of command of the language is entirely his or her fault, as is the stunning lack of socialization or introspection.

Let's all point and laugh!

This weekend, my son started watching the Star Wars movies. This is an important event in the life of a child, akin to the rites of passage of the past where small children were sent out in breechcloths to kill lions with their bare hands, or dig for grubs with their bare tongues, or similar odious tasks. Happily, we are an enlightened people, and parents no longer have to deal with bloody lion (or child) carcasses soiling the carpets, or must try to put bandaids on dirty tongues.

Instead, we are forced to relive the great arguments of the past in the innocent questions of the young. Why, indeed, are stormtroopers not all the same height, given that they are clones? As I watched, with half an eye, the great saga that is Star Wars, some questions popped into my head that had never popped before.

Imagine that Adolf Hitler conquered the world. He is now known as Der Fuhrer, of course, and rules with an iron hand and generally goes around scaring the bejesus out of people. Imagine that in a desert region, far from the bright centers of the Nazi world – maybe in Indiana – there is a young boy with the last name Hitler. He becomes involved with the resistance, and learns to fly, and in a climactic confrontation with Der Fuhrer at a oil shale strip mine in Alberta learns that Der Fuhrer is in fact his father. Should he be surprised? Would no one have ever commented on the puzzling similarity of last names?

If Han Solo marries Princess Leia, what are their kids’ last names going to be? Solo-Organa/Skywalker? Are they royal? Is Princess Organa royal because of her birth, or by adoption, or both? Is lovable rogue Han thereby made a prince-consort, a sort of upscale gigolo?

What happens to the Ewoks after their improbable victory over that crack imperial legion on the forest moon of Endor? The Empire is not going away at once, are they brutally repressed, or is the Empire too busy for petty vengeance? Does the Rebellion try to help them out? Given that they are so preposterously martially competent, to they enlist in the service of the Rebellion as a sort of fuzzy Gurkha regiment and, armed with improved, metal, spears go on to kick stormtrooper ass throughout the galaxy? Personally, I believe that they will attempt to crassly cash in on their helpful but in the end walk-on role in the defeat of the dread Galactic empire, and make trillions of credits on the lecture circuit and in the marketing of fuzzy action figures and Ewok™ dolls to the credulous youth of ten thousand systems.

Finally, decadent and depraved, they will be displaced by the marginalized, but very populous ethnic group of ex-stormtroopers, who, with their wives, will be in search of a homeland where they will be safe from persecution by all those who hate them. Choosing a location that is not coincidently the site of their most emotionally powerful defeat will seal the deal, and the new Senate will approve the expulsion of the greedy, conniving and only superficially cute Ewoks.

I think, too, that the name Jar Jar Binks will go down in history (now that, after the collapse of the Imperial Censor’s office books are once again being written) as one of the greatest traitors in history. Like Benedict Arnold, whose early military successes are overwhelmed by his betrayals, Jar Jar’s actions in the Senate will be a permanent stain on the honor of his people, whatever the hell they are called.

And, really, where do all these Sith come from? We are told that there are only two Sith at a time, one a master, one an apprentice. But as soon as the noble Jedi off one of these fuckers, there’s another one growing up in his place, just as mean and even more competent. Sure, the Sith can take advantage of the existing Jedi program as kind of a farm league for Sith talent, but there must be some knowledge that can only be transmitted Sith to Sith, as it were. I mean, if the whole basis of the extraordinary power of the Sith is merely, “Use your hate, it will make you strong; follow the Dark Side” well, surely there would be thousands of competing Sithoid factions. They’d be as common as Starbucks franchises, or, perhaps more appropriately, Hair Metal bands in the eighties. (Which would make Punk, and later Grunge, into Jedi. Shudder.)

If all it took was one disgruntled Jedi saying (if only to himself) “Fuck this, I hate that arrogant, backwards-talking prick Yoda!” to unleash the power of the dark side, one would think that the Jedi wouldn’t have lasted for a thousand days, let alone a millennium, no matter how good their indoctrination.

Finally, if it weren’t for the unabashed evil talk of the Sith, and Chancellor (later Emperor) Palpitating and his evil and various Darths, I’d be hard pressed to argue against their program. The Republic is about as useful, in the time of the prequels, as the UN is today. And as ethically challenged. They want to bring order to the galaxy. What’s wrong with that? The Jedi, with their bizarre code and weird eugenic determinism, seem to not be very useful at all. Certainly not as useful, in the face of faceless corporate droid armies, as a bunch of highly skilled, well armed, and polite clones.

The force guides them, but they can’t detect a massively evil operation that is not only operating in their midst, but is practically dancing in front of them with a giant, strobing, “I’m a Sith” sign on its chest. Didn’t they read Luttwak’s Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook? Sheesh. And if Starting Anakin’s training at age seven was not sufficient to keep him from the dark side, then the Jedi could take some lessons from the Jesuits. Perhaps we could export some. Although Jedi-Jesuits would probably be a very bad thing. What color light sabers would the Jesuits use? Ignatius Loyola would have done a better job than goofy, half-pint, inside-out speaking Yoda, especially if he had light sabers and the Force to go along with his fanatical devotion to the Pope. (Among our chief weapons are such diverse elements as fear, terror, a near fanatical devotion to the Pope, light sabers and the Jesuit mind-trick…)

Carnival of the Recipes #135, the "Dinner and a Movie" edition is up at Blabber Heads.

And the other:

Punchline:

"Because he's a liar. He never did any of that shit."

Joke:

"Talking Dog For Sale."

He rings the bell and the owner appears and tells him the dog is in the backyard.

The guy goes into the backyard and sees a nice looking Labrador retriever sitting there.

"You talk?" he asks.

"Yep," the Lab replies.

After the guy recovers from the shock of hearing a dog talk, he says "So, what's your story?"

The Lab looks up and says, "Well, I discovered that I could talk when I was pretty young. I wanted to help the government, so I told the CIA. In no time at all they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping. I was one of their most valuable spies for
eight years running."

"But the jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn't getting any younger so I decided to settle down. I signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security, wandering near suspicious characters and listening in."

"I uncovered some incredible dealings and was awarded a batch of medals. I got married, had a mess of puppies, and now I'm just retired."

The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog. "Ten dollars," the man says.

"Ten dollars? This dog is amazing! Why on earth are you selling him so cheap?"

"Because he's a liar. He never did any of that shit."