1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 small can corn, drained
1/2 a red onion, chopped
2 large tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 can Ro-tel tomato/chile blend, drained
1/2 can Ro-tel “hot” variety, drained.
2 limes

Grab a largeish bowl; dump and stir. Not the limes though. You only want their juice.

Cover and refridgerate for as long as you can stand.

Is this the best salsa ever in the WHOLE WORLD?’

No. But it’s my first attempt, and I like it.

This is the level of deep thinking displayed by opponents of healthcare reform.

Elsewhere, other health care reform opponents are engaged in flat-out lying and fearmongering about universal health care systems elsewhere in the world, and making absurd declarations that our current system is “the finest in the world”.

Our health care system is not the best, nor even close, on any objective measure.

• We have shittier outcomes for things like life expectancy and infant mortality than any number of other “civilized” countries
• We have hordes of uninsured people without regular access to preventive care, which is of course cheaper than emergency response care
• We have even more middle-class folks who are underinsured and can be driven to bankruptcy and family disaster by medical costs
• Even people with wonderful health insurance (like me) are constrained from changing jobs or starting small businesses because health insurance is tied to employment, and you often can’t change insurance if you have a “pre-existing condition”.

For the privilege of maintaining this shitty, unfair, godawful system, we pay twice as much for healthcare as the rest of the world.

Don’t mistake me for a fan of the currently proposed reforms; they don’t go nearly far enough, and any serious attempts at reform will be blocked by craven “centrist” Democrats, not by the universally despised Republican congressional minority. This is not a Democrats-vs-Republicans, liberals-vs-conservatives question; neither group wants to upset their corporate donors by disrupting the profit flow to HMOs and the like.

The question is: will we build access to health care into the basic infrastructure of our country, like roads and schools and law enforcement? Or will we punt and keep our terrible, unfair system in place for another 15 or 20 years before reform can be considered again?

It ended up sort of a weird process; most quark recipes are acid-set (you ferment the milk until the curd breaks) but I was attempting a lazier and shortcuttier version that introduces a bit of rennet partway through the culturing process. The rennet had no effect that I could see, though… so I left it longer and it ended up getting two full days of fermentation. That’s still well within the range I saw in various recipes, but by then I was getting impatient again and so I put the whole kit in an oven set to “warm” and voila, two hours later the curd broke.

I left it to drain through cheesecloth overnight and then attacked the slightly-hardened curd with a hand blender.

The result was a texture somewhere between cottage cheese and cream cheese, although it doesn’t taste like either IMO. I had some for lunch yesterday with a fruit cup and some raw broccoli and it was pretty awesome. I mixed about 3oz. with a teaspoon of honey for dessert last night and that was pretty awesome as well.

I don’t know the nutritional info since I made this myself, but off-the-shelf skim milk quark has something like 22 cal/oz, with about 4g protein and 1.5g carbs. I used 2% milk so my quark will have some fat in it.

I haven’t tried making sahnequark (basically quark smoothed with cream for a yogurt-like consistency; it’s crazy delicious to make fruit salad with this) or kräuterquark (herbed quark smoothed with a small amount of liquid, whey or milk or sour cream or creme fraiche, and used as a spread) but I intend to do both. Yum!

(I’m NOT going to make quarkkuchen, german cheesecake, because I am trying to LOSE weight, not gain it).

I’m trying to make some quark and I need a nice sterile place to put 5 quarts of fermenting milk. I have a few 5-quart bowls, actually, but I’m going to use 5 quarts of liquid and it needs some sloshing room, so I really need a 6 or 7-quart vessel.

I can’t use my 6-quart pot because it is still recovering from something incredibly dangerous and very stupid that I did to it the other day (that would be another story).

This would be a good time to get an actual stockpot, thinks me. Easy peasy.

You’d think!

Sears had bupkis (lovely sale on flat, cast-iron prybars, though).
Kohls had any number of N-piece kits (8 < N < 15) for between $99 and $300, plus a standalone Paula Deen-branded stockpot for something like $175.
Gordman’s had a $13 stockpot that wasn’t worth $0.13; the inner surface was flaking off and seemed to involve paint, or some other coating so cheap and nasty as to seem paint-like.
Wal-mart had a perfectly serviceable set of options. So I ended up spending my money at the Wal-mart.

This is all to my chagrin since I am, theoretically, opposed to Wal-mart. I mean, yeah, shady employment practices, union-busting, destroying local businesses, homogenization of local culture, etc., but I really just can’t stand how slowly their checkout lines move.

Anyway, my milk products are happily fermenting now. But I am still wishing for the opportunity to buy kitchen junkses without grinding my teeth to nubs in the process. Alton Brown keeps telling me to shop at restaurant supply stores, but I can’t find any such thing around here. I guess that’s why they invented the webternets.

Also: where the hell do I buy cheesecloth?

Meantime, here’s some memory lane:

If those aren’t literally her first steps, they are close to it. I love how she’s telling herself “good job” there. Daphne is all about the self-affirmation.

Here she is a little older (20 months or so):

Haha, take that, haters! Ah, I just couldn’t leave the bitter angry stuff at the top of the ol’ blog page.

But no, they were worse than my most ungenerous assumptions.

One of the takeaways of the torture memos is that we tortured some prisoners hundreds of times. There are not a lot of reasons to do that. Even the assholes who insist that torture produces useful intelligence (and it doesn’t) have to argue that the purpose of the torture is to get fast cooperation and data about imminent threats; that simply doesn’t apply if you’re torturing someone 6 times a day for more than a month.

So why keep it up?

Why, to prove the link between Iraq and al-Qaeda, of course.

Anyone paying a modicum of attention knew that Bush and the PNAC krewe who adopted him in the late 90s wanted to invade Iraq well before 9-11. They didn’t keep it a secret or anything. We knew that they were using 9-11 as a pretext to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9-11.

But at my very most cynical I didn’t think they would simply torture POWs to obtain false confessions to “prove” that nonexistent link.

As Paul Krugman points out, the word for this is “evil”. This is unquestionably the kind of shit that we executed people for doing in WWII.

Hi Senator Dvorsky,

I’m writing to tell you how pleased I am at today’s Supreme Court ruling affirming the rights of Iowans to marry regardless of their sexual orientation. I am happy for my gay and lesbian friends and neighbors, and proud that Iowa continues its long tradition of bravery and leadership on civil rights issues.

Please work with your Senate colleagues to ensure that this civil rights gain is not overturned. I know that opponents of this important decision are once again pushing a state constitutional amendment banning state recognition of marriages between same-sex partners. As was the case with the recent Proposition 8 fight in California, the legislative battle is likely to attract attention and money from organizations that would seek to restrict the rights of Iowans. Such organizations have proven their willingness to abuse civil law to impose their religious beliefs on others, against their will.

Unlike California, Iowa has had the good sense to set a relatively high barrier to constitutional amendment. This policy recognizes that constitutional rights should not be subject to political whim. The personal rights defined in the Iowa Constitution include such bedrock principles as the right to life, property rights, freedom of speech and press, religious liberty, and equal protection under the law. I am glad to live in a state where the whim of 51% of the populace may not deprive the other 49% of these rights.

High barriers notwithstanding, I hope and expect that you will oppose any attempt to pass a Proposition 8-style amendment through the state legislature. I do not want to see such a measure pass even one step in the process toward constitutional amendment.

Today the Supreme Court has considered a difficult and divisive question and has come down squarely on the side of justice and liberty. Please know that this constituent appreciates that and hopes that you will help to protect it.

Thanks,
(my address and contact info)

This most recent entry is the subject of some debate, with some saying it is probably a student demoreel and others saying it probably cost way too much money and time for that. I must say the locations and effects work do seem very professional.

This earlier effort is from a different source AFAIK, and remarkable for the blend of in-game video and real-life stuff. It’s not seamless or anything but it’s pretty good!

Boy do I hope episode 3 comes out soon. I am kind of done with l4d.

</NERDERY>

This doesn’t count deliberate reposts. This, I’m gonna repost everywhere. Just ‘cuz.

Recently we got to hear from the Republican governor of Louisiana about how volcano monitoring (which is to say: disaster preparedness) is wasteful government pork almost in the same breath that he complained about the government’s failures during Katrina. This is maybe part of a jobs program for satirists, I dunno.

Anyway, one new data point, offered without commentary: guess who buys the most porn online? States that voted for McCain, places with anti-gay-marriage laws, and Utah. Yep.

And for a certain type of 5-year-old, this is the time to turn bright red and shriek at great volume whatever is spilling forth from your unchained id. Such as:

“You are pinheads! Your heads are full of poop and it is spilling out your ears!”

“I hate you and you have to get a new child! Go get a new child!”

“Let me talk! Let me talk or I am going to call the police!”

“Go jump off the balcony! Right now!”

“Get out of this house right now, I mean it. I’ll show you!”

“If you love me you will go get my friends back! If you hate me you will let them go home!”

“I want my mommy to come here right now! Right now!”

“Take that!” (throws pillow) “And take that!” (throws blanket)

“Stop laughing! This is not funny! One more laugh and it will happen, I will show you!” 

We laughed until we collapsed, actually.

I see fresh kills along this road almost every day; we’ve been calling it Deerbuque for years. It’s really Dubuque Road, but it threads its way along the lakeside and between massive cornfields, now empty save the stubble that is apparently good eating for vast, unbelievable numbers of deer. I have never been brave or foolhardy enough to count while whizzing by, but I’m sure I saw 50 or 75 of them spread out across one of the fields last week.

My deer is still there.

Her ribcage is open to the sky, and the receding snow has left her exposed, like a friend who drinks too much at a party and falls asleep in a chair with her skirt hiked up. I am embarrassed and feel vaguely responsible. I don’t know how to help.

Friend One is laid out just off the shoulder at the end of a red-slick trail from the center of the road. Two days ago Friend One was bloated, but yesterday a trio of buzzards came by to open her up and relieve the pressure. One of them inspects her dourly, slump-shouldered, while the other two stand guard.

Friend Two is receiving the greater attention as she is attended today by a pair of bald eagles. The prince and princess tear strips from Friend Two’s belly at their leisure, while an honor guard of crows wait nearby. I am reminded that bald eagles are not only regal but also desperately insane. Do not hold a staring contest with a raptor.

Just a few steps down the road, a young hawk stands right on the grass, staring down at his feet like he was caught sneaking cookies from the jar. No dessert for you, young man!

Previous deer updates are over here.

1. I have an very wasteful form of writer’s block. I have plenty of things to write about; stuff is bouncing around the inside of my skull constantly, but I usually don’t actually start writing. I am more disgusted with my self than usual about this, right at the moment.

2. When I was 3 or 4 my family’s house in Phoenix burned down. It was something to do with the water heater, I believe. I have a vague memory of being held by one of the neighbors, in my pajamas because it was the middle of the night. Most everything was lost but my parents salvaged a soot streaked teddy bear, which made a nice conversation piece.

3. I used to work for an aluminum foundry. It made small intricate investment-casted parts for, like fighter planes or something. I took carefully positioned x-rays of a random sample of these parts, wearing a lead vest and a dosimeter badge.

4. I blew up. Did you know you can build your own pyrotechnic stage effects? It’s true. Screw down a cleaned can (a soup can or 12oz paint pot) and run an electrical line into it; wire that to a flashbulb broken out of a disposable Polaroid flash bar. Then just dump about a teaspoon of gunpowder into the pot, and when you’re ready, plug in the cord (or even better, wire the cord into a switchbox). It makes a great effect! However, you should be careful not to be standing too close when it goes off. You should be extra careful not to be leaning down to make an adjustment, with your face directly over the pot, when someone flips the switch on accident. Fun facts: 1) you know in cartoons when something explodes and the character’s hair sticks straight out in all directions? Yeah, they didn’t just make that up, and 2) they can give you a local that totally keeps you from feeling anything when they are digging debris out of your cornea with a power tool.

5. I have a tattoo. There is very little chance you have ever seen it unless you’ve seen me in a bathing suit or something as it is on my leg and above the knee. It is of a cartoon penguin.

6. I was in a very silly movie one time. Among the things I have learned from this experience is that everybody gets an IMDB page. Also that one should not assume that no strangers have uploaded video to youtube of one making sort of a jackass of oneself, because one might just be surprised.

7. I seriously cannot believe how old I look. Mirrors freak me out at the moment. I don’t think I was mentally prepared to get this old. This problem recurs every few years, so I figure it’s an inbuilt personality trait: a deep-seated aversion to thinking about my personal future beyond the next year or two. When I was in junior high — say, 7th grade or so — I’m pretty sure I had no idea what happened to a person after high school. I know that I had heard of “college” but my mental model of that concept was practically a blank slate, and I didn’t care either. This came back to bite me in the ass later on.

Hmmn. Now I’m supposed to tag seven other people. Do I know seven people with blogs to tag?

I’ll say:
* my sister
* my brother
* this one lady who shall remain nameless
* my sister-in-law’s brother (there is no name for that relationship. guy-I-know?)
* Angie
* the white house
* mahmoud ahmadinejad

I kinda gave up a little at the end there.