Absolut Lactam
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Absolut Lactam" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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07:45 pm
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 .Comments screened. This is my quick notepad. I'm sixty today.
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11:06 am
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Hmm..
If there was ever a National Service Funding Week ... and they had to send out e-mails, I don't think anyone would read it. NSFW.
Also, some rather odd changes have happened in my life, and I'm really busy with stuff. No, no ... LJ... this isn't breaking up, I just need a little "me" time. I know haven't actually read anything that anyone's posted in damn near forever, but that's because I'm off on adventures, discovering the limits of my peak physical performance. Yes, yes, I know I haven't been posting much either, but posting about how much your butt hurts after 45km doesn't sound like something that people want to read about. If it's any consolation, my second job is also feeling the pinch. I haven't been back to the kitchen in well over a month (or is it two now? I forget). Hey, don't bring that up, I am not passing you up for Facebook. Facebook and I are like old friends. Ok, yes, we've known each other longer, but it's not like it's anything serious between me and Facebook. Hey, at least I'm not treating you like Twitter. After a brief and uninetersting tryst, it was over. Typical. Twitter was always a flash in the pan. Brief, with very little substance.
I also have chapters to write. Some of the stuff that's happening marks a very important point in my life, and I have better write it down before I forget. Especially in light of the olden days of the rants and such that I used to write, this is really good stuff.
Anyway, I'll see you around. Give me a call, we'll do lunch or something.
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11:26 am
[Link] | I just did the math. It will take at least five ten (forgot to multiply by 2) 9V batteries to power this beast.
The people at the airport will not like this one bit. One giant construct, with wires, batteries and blinkenlights.
Strangely enough, I have enough AA batteries to make this happen, but there's a certain operational difficulty in that AA batteries do not solder well together. However, if you have a good idea on how to hook up 32-36 of them in series in a reasonable amount of space without having to solder anything, I'd like to hear it. Also, taping them together does not sound like a workable solution.
However, 9V batteries are designed ... DESIGNED... to be set up in series. America, F**K YEAH!!!
Luckily, Slob-laws ... er .. I mean, Loblaws, was kind enough to open their doors at a ridiculously early hour of the morning, and allow me to buy armfuls of 9V batteries. BEHOLD!! the result. In the end, I used only 9 of the 9V batteries.
Strangely enough, I was able to put together enough of these beasts to reach 120V... then I started hooking them up in parallel. I could power all sorts of stuff. The little zaps you get are TOTALLY WORTH IT!!! Seriously... walk around the house and suddenly power up the stereo... a computer... how cool is that?
Just about any activity that starts with "well, you'll need a soldering iron" automatically becomes something that you must do. Bonus points if there's bits that go "boom"
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07:27 pm
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On Sanity, and questioning it.
Every now and again, I wonder if I still have all my marbles in. Then I look at my wall of post it notes with faces on them, then look at Beaker and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, and then look at my sheep and other assorted amusing things in my office and am still no better at an answer.
I started wondering the same thing when I got home and started upon A Big ProjectTM. Using a soldering iron to remove 28 LED's from various circuit boards (some of them were switches from some old telecom equipment I dd'd for back in the day), and adding those to some other LED's that I have lying around (don't ask me why... I don't even know), it finally came to me. It doesn't matter if I'm insane or not. In a few years, I'll graduate to "eccentric" and not have to worry.
In the meantime, I will prepare to pick up a future houseguest at the airport. See, there's a bit of method to my madness. I made a very large sign out of a pizza box with the aforementioned guest's name, and now I will proceed to solder the LED's onto the aforementioned box. It will be a sign made out of awesome. I just wish I had time to make a circuit to make them into blinkenlights.
Pictures to follow, assuming that the people at the airport don't think that it's a bomb and arrest me.
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03:38 pm
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GOOD GOD!! MY EYES!!!
"Southland Tales". From the people that brought you Donnie Darko.
I want those two and a half hours of my life back. No, seriously. This was awful beyond awful. John Laroquette doing a southern accent, burned-out SNL cast-offs, The Rock... and the most terrible script ever.
An example: (voiceover, as you watch a blonde drinking from a can with her face on it) "Proposition 69. To Crista (sp?) that number had one meaning and one meaning only. To everyone else, it was a proposition on a ballot to restrict the powers of the oppressive powers known as USIDent."
Yes, I get the whole thing where they're trying to be ironic, but it just feels so overdone. Yeah, probably in ten years or so, it will have camp value and we'll be able to watch it with the same sort of attitude that we watch "Rocky Horror" now, or watching JCVH five years from now (it's almost ripe!).
Also.. the scene with the "mirror" ... WTF?
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04:03 pm
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OMG!
I just picked a Dudley lock, and was thrust into memories of high school. Wow.
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06:21 pm
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One final word about nachos
Very well.
I will do this.
This may cause a heart attack, or a coronary, but still, I have to know if it can be done. Now that I have all these nacho supplies under my disposal, it would be a crime to waste them. Thus, it remains for me to make ... the knockout nacho. I don't exactly know why I have to make this, as the faeries in my dreams did not explain their motivations, but this has to be made.
Before you begin, buy some half-decent chicken. Boil it with rosemary and thyme. Don't ask me why. This makes everything work. If you have frozen chicken bits, cut them into quarters. Boil them. BOIL THEM!!! I SAID BOIL THEM!!! BOIL THEM INTO SUBMISSION!!!
Now... Dice them. If you don't know what dicing is, just throw the friggin' lot into a blender and hit "dice". Otherwise, you have bits. All right. You have some shredded mozzarella? What? What not? Run right out, go into your nearest nacho place and steal some mozzarella.
Ok. Now we're set. Two more ingredients. The nachos themselves (organic, because we care about the planet, or whatever) are only half the base. There also needs to be sauce. What? You say that you already have salsa? That may be true, but you forget that you have yummy, yummy meat on those nachos. Wait, hold on. I'm gonna call them machos. Man nachos. Machos. They demand (with a firm thumping of a fist on a table) a sauce.
Thus, a BBQ sauce is needed. For nachos, either "Diana's Own" or "Bulls Eye" will work.
I leave the cheese selection up to you, but for a true comatose-inducing meal, I recommend the heavy milk cheeses, especially the creamy ones.
Feel free to collapse unconsciously and just enjoy the flavour.
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09:13 am
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OH... MY... GOD...
I just realized that I can make nachos again at home.
There are nachos for vegetarians (yes, I do have organic nacho chips), there are meaty (chicken, turkey, beef) nachos... and for the purists, the individual chips in a toaster oven. Given the several litres of salsa, I will slowly embark on a journey of cheeses. Mozzarella is a regular staple, and I can understand American Jack, but what about the French ones? Gruyere? Camembert? Heck, toss in some Canadian Oka. I've had some success with Parmesan, but only when combined with a very bland cheese like ... (sigh) ... mozzarella. Maybe the solution is to combine the volume of mozzarella with the tanginess of Parmesan?
Don't talk to me about cheddar. The short, but brief love affair we had is now lost to the ages as the wisps of the flame of our love has died out long ago. You will never again grace the foods that I cook or serve.
intestinal lining? BAH!! You don't need that. I will forever treasure my time with that block of jalapeno Havarti. Sadly, I doubt that it would ever make it in a nacho dish. Interestingly enough, it has proven quite useful in a creamy sauce for pasta dishes. California veggies (or winter veggies, depending on where you are), with a serving of pasta, with a cheese and milk sauce... yum. It remains the dish that has proven to not only satisfy the Brits, but also the Aussies (as was proven at my house in late February of this year).
I leave you with one last thought. The idea of mental institutions may not be to keep society safe from the person being incarcerated, but to keep that person safe from society.
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07:33 am
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Hmm...
After careful assessment, I have decided that the torch has been passed on. Indeed, the prevailing zeitgeist should be "2 girls 1 sub" and not "2 girls 1 cup". While this has indeed expanded the number of companies involved, I feel that this can only help stimulate the economy in these troubled times.
While I do not know of any of these sub shops in my immediate vicinity, or near my workplace, I wish them the best of luck in their efforts to keep teenagers employed. Their competitors, however, do have outlets near my work and one is able to procure their offerings for a ridiculously inflated price.
Then again, Quiznos will now forever be associated with poo. To quote Seinfeld: "Who are the ad geniuses that came up with this one?"
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06:22 pm
[Link] | I keep confusing LL Cool J with Tone Loc.
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11:45 am
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Huzzah!!
I finally finished eating the apple, and I can confidently day that I will never again eat a candied apple again.
Also, I put up posters in my entertainment room. That room is made out of awesome. There are no leftover bricks of awesome, that room was built to spec. There will be a T.V. there one day, and it is on that day that the world will stop, just for a heartbeat, and then spin again. The awesome will go on.
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06:38 am
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What?
Weird stuff happens to me.
Yesterday, I was called up and offered some tickets. I put the call out to people to see who was game. A former coworker called back and it was on. We met up (I was late, augh!!) and attended the event, strangely not even having to give up our tickets. The spectacle was a wonderful acrobatic event by the Nanjing ... uh... gymnasts? We met up with the MC (who was a native from an area neat Quebec city) and managed to convince a lovely Chinese family to share a booth with them. A beer and a poutine later, we were in business. Oh yeah.
While I did have tickets for the late show, there was three hours before it started. Thus, we decided to just start walking around. It was then that we wound up at the Elgin Street Video Store. Now, I love movies. I REALLY love movies. I love good movies. Me, walking into ESVS is like ... (metaphor that involves a person who loves food and a place that offers food) ... or even ... (metaphor that involves a person who loves something, and a place that offers that something). We spent a lot of time looking at movies and just joshing around. Unfortunately, I was not able to procure some of the items that I would have purchased (i.e. Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter), so we left in disappointment. This is not to say that it was not a satisfactory experience, since that place literally has all the movies I would ever want to rent. They just didn't have all the movies that I wanted to buy.
Anyway, we went for pints at the Fox and Feather. We sat at the bar and talked shop. We sat and talked for a while, in order to make sure that we could drive ourselves home. I drove her to her car and went home.
Wow... uh... did I just go on a date and not realize it?
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04:00 pm
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Fairly unusual
For those of us who grew up elsewhere on this planet, there is a high likelihood that we did not experience some of the same things that some of the "locals" have experienced. Now, some of these things are the traditional local fare (fried chicken in Mississippi? Hello!! Po-boys? Oh yeah!!) However, there is one North American foodstuff that I have only now had the ... unique ... pleasure of consuming. I am talking about the candied apple. Now, having worked in the food service industry (and in theory, I still do... I just don't get that many shifts), I can tell you that there's well over a dozen varieties of apples, each suited for their own particular uses. There's baking apples, snacking apples, and apples that you use to peg off the smarmy bastard who is telling you about varieties of apples (apples for your teacher, and ones to ward off your doctor notwithstanding).
Thus, I bring to you the oddly disturbing tale of the candied apple that I am in the process of trying to eat. It's my first one. I don't mean to be critical, but ... come on. The traditional candied apple is a Red Delicious covered in some sort of red syrupy substance that no doubt clings to your teeth and lower digestive tract. What I have is ... well... I think it's the bastard child of a chocolate bar and a Granny Smith, that spent some time rolling around in peanuts. Now before you start getting images of geriatrophilia in your mind, let me remind you that I'm talking about the green apple that tastes like paper. Thus, I am equally amazed that it was this apple that was chosen as a vehicle for the sugar and legume that I attempted to consume for the first time ever in my life.
The cohesive force that held this all together was, in fact, caramel. Now, if you have any semblance of an imagination, you now have figured out the layers. Apple (green), caramel, chocolate, and then nuts. I have to ask myself, not having eaten anything like this ever before: what in the world would motivate someone to do this? Was there a time that nutrition was at such a catastrophically low level that the locals needed to resort to dipping apples in sugary syrup in order to fulfill the nutritional requirements of the local populace? How did someone decide that it would be an improvement to bastardize this idea to an unholy bastard child of a chocolate bar and a not-very-good-snacking-apple?
Good god, at least they could have used a Royal Gala apple. At least those are good.
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11:10 am
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I almost forgot....
While penning my previous missive, a particular noteworthy piece of information was omitted:
However, everything has worked out. That's because I'm smart, like Batman.
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10:32 am
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Oops... reality has snapped.
It's right about a few minutes ago that I think reality snapped.
Somewhere between waking up at the ungodly hour of 4:45am, and the unexpected rainstorm a few minutes ago, the very fabric of time and space unweaved itself. As with all good mornings, this one included some time in the garden, pulling out weeds and trying to bloody well figure out what the f***ing he** is a poplar and what is an elderberry. This is a crucial deciding point, as I will happily drink some elderberry tea, but those damned poplars have got to die.
Either way, in my bleary-eyed state (I got back about half ten last night from the doc night), I knew that I had to finally shed myself of the (literally) couch-full of periodicals from my grad school days. Imagine, making ~$17k a year, paying $5k in tuition, and then you decide to subscribe to not one, not two, but THREE periodicals. Each week, Tetrahedron Letters would show up, and I know there was a tree in the Netherlands that disappeared. Then, every other week, Organic Letters and Journal of Organic Chemistry would show up, and I knew that somewhere in the American mid-west, at least an entire tree was used up. Now, I had a subscription for close to six years. Think about that. One of them is weekly, and the other two are biweekly. They're not thin. J.O.C. and Tet.Lett. usually go for about 10k and 7.5k pages, respectively per year, and Org.Lett. cracks 5k pages a year.
Thus, I had to put a lot of paper out to the curb. It's sad, really. Nowadays, people just grad the PDF's off the respective websites. I used to ship old issues to friends in countries that were not ... allied ... with the US. Now it's pointless.
I did some gardening. No more dandelions. More plants in more places. Yay!
Thus I will boil up some pierogies and try and catch up on some much-needed sleep.
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05:46 pm
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I have built a bed.
I have built a bed.
Yes, the kind you sleep in. However. This is a special bed. I have made this bed really comfy. The mattress is not especially soft or anything like that, but the mattress and support is in a really nice place. The room is nice and faces south. There's a lovely garden that you see if you look outside. There's a bamboo plant that is growing on the ledge in one corner, and a helicopter plant above the headboard.
Here's the catch. This is the world's most comfortable bed ever. I'm not kidding. You can walk up to this bed, pay your respects, and tell it how long you want to sleep. Then you sleep, and you sleep FOR THAT EXACT AMOUNT OF TIME!!! More than that, you wake up, fully rested.
I've only set up three bedrooms. This appears to be the apogee of my achievements, but I'm pretty sure that I can do better. I'm still not sure how, though. Even a one hour nap coming out of that bed feels better than sex.
Perhaps when I renovate the downstairs, I will make an even better nap-bed. Hopefully, this will not be a bed that someone will want to weaponize. ATTACK BEDS!!! OH NO!!! IT'S NAPTIME!!! I'M FEELING A BIT TUCKERED AFTER LUNCH!!!
... as you were...
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10:09 am
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*blink* *blink*
Whoa... wait ... huh?
I just realized that I've been busy the past few days. I actually had things to do.
- Wed night was documentary night. Bumped into people, met new people, brought miramitsu, mirumirzu ... REALLY YUMMY COOKIES!!!
- Thu was the Embassy gig. Holy mackerel, there were a lot of people. The carved beef was a bit of a surprise, and the crowd was awesome. I met a Korean general, and bumped into old friends, some of whom have received some rather impressive promotions.
- Friday ... benefit for Psychiatric Survivors of Ottawa. Amazing show. Great talent. I'm telling you, I know that the US has been stealing out comedians for years, but if they ever get their grubby little hands on the folks that have come out of the psych wards, we'll be all tapped out.
- last night, amazing BBQ of wings and ribs and great socializing. I divided up my time between my mom and a mom-to-be. Sadly, I was wiped by the time coffee and cake came around.
There was work there in there as well.
I just watched "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" (AGAIN!!) and came to a startling realization about how free market economies really don't function well in an overinflated bubble like the US. They had the dot com bubble, they had the S&L crisis, they had the Enron scandal, then there's the real estate bubble, and now the automakers? This has been in the works since Kennedy, and I know Nixon cut a few more strings loose, and it was Regan who left the gas on...
Anyway, I built a bed a few days ago for someone who will be staying with me for a while. Oh my god. It's heavenly. This truly is the bed to end all beds. I've had naps on that bed that have made my soul whole again. That bed lets you sleep exactly how long you want. Whether it be a half hour, or a whole night, you will not wake unless you are ready. Also, from the bed, you can see my sexy garden.
*EDIT* Now, the garden is poplar-free.
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02:13 pm
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*stretch*
Ok.
So, I'm about a month and a half away from hosting a student. In the meantime, I have seen a remarkable, if not stunning, amount of input from friends and colleagues. Wow. I don't know how else to express this emotion, but it's kind of like "you never know the friends you have until you need them". The kindness expressed by you will be felt by them when they experience the grand wonder of the Great White North.
Wow.
I'm kind of stunned right now. Luckily, I sautee'd a lot of filet of sole last night and that should carry me though the next few days. There's Smiley's in the freezer! For those who are not familiar with these potato creations, I will assure you they're yummy.
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08:52 am
[Link] | *** Timelines are sketchy here *** Please don't try and correct me. I'm just working on the ideas, and have little care for the details of exactly what happened when. I'm only trying to spit out the zeitgeist.
Back about 11 years ago, Mark Thomas did this whole thing about "attack journalism", akin to the kind of stunts that the CBC used to pull off when their version of Xena would confront Members of Parliament. I've been thinking that this kind of thing has been in place for quite some time. The necessary aspect of it is that it is a sort of ambush. An element of surprise. Not a Barbara Walters interview or a Larry King piece. The yanks attempted their first foray into the genre with Geraldo (yes, but back when he FIRST starting out) and have moved on to The Daily Show.
This underlines the other facet of the "attack journalism", in that in order to be effective, it necessarily has to be spun as a sort of comedy. "Hey, what if we went up to Dick Cheney and asked him about the WMD's?" This is not something that would ever make the news in any self-respecting "official" news station, but would fit in quite well with any of the three vehicles that I have mentioned above. Now, if memory serves me right, based on past performance, the UK equivalents would be something like Mark Thomas, Ali G (based on the MP's he's had on his show before Borat), and ... Charlie Brooker? No, wait, he doesn't do interviews. How about Al Murray? He's had some higher up politicals on his "Happy Hour" show. Right, on to Canada. We've had our ambush (comedian) journalists on This Hour Has 22 Minutes, and Rick Mercer (who can ever forget the nude bit with Bob Rae jumping into a lake?). What about the yanks? They're kind of limited to the Daily Show, Colbert Report and Bill Mayer. Some of the other stuff never makes it on to TV.
Keep in mind that when I first came to this side of the world, my view was jaded by Spitting Image and MAD magazine.
Now pardon me while I try and track down the episode with Harry Anderson of that (ugh) show (gack) ... 30 (gag) Rock.
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07:39 am
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Parallels
The brit show Jekyll is a strange and similar show to the yank My Own Worst Enemy.
I might've already made this discovery.
However, now that Dollhouse is up and running, it's finally the piece that confirms to me that the bigwigs in the entertainment industry start with something that works, and continue to polish that turd until it shines. Dollhouse is a sad little sequel to the two shows mentioned above. Call it what you will, but the idea remains the same. Spinoffs, derivatives, whatever.
I have made a new discovery. More on this later. Right now, I have to build bedrooms.
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