Words for the wise from the mouth of a fool.
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Saturday, October 19, 2002
Friday, October 18, 2002
It was one of those nights where I was both hungry enough to eat anything and too lazy to go to the store. So I made up a recipe from things I had around the house. And as it was surprisingly good, I now share it with you, gentle reader:
Six-Layer Pasta
Ingredients
1 pound hamburger
1 16 oz can red kidney beans*
1 4 oz can mushrooms*
1 2 cups frozen peas*
1 cup spaghetti sauce*
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1 1/2 cups mozzarella cheese
3 cups guscetti
cayenne pepper
salt
* These are tonight's canned understudies for the fresh versions you surely have in your larder.
Fill a small pot half-full of water, throughly salt, and set aside to boil. Brown hamburger and drain of excess grease. Add peas, mushrooms and kidney beans to hamburger and cook on medium heat, stirring frequently. Add cayenne pepper to meat and vegetables, stir. Add spaghetti sauce as binding agent, stir. Cover and continue to heat, but stir frequently so things don't cook to the bottom of the pan. Once water is boiling, add guscetti and boil until firm. Yes, you should stir it frequently too.
At long last, your ordeal of stirring comes to an end. In a large microwave-safe bowl, Pour about a third of the meat and vegetables into the bowl. Toss in some parmesan cheese, then half the pasta. (You're making layers, see, so now you shouldn't stir.) Another third of the meat and vegetables, some parmesan. The rest of the pasta, followed by the rest of everything else. Top with the mozzarella cheese and microwave for two minutes. Let sit for a minute, then microwave again for one minute or until cheese melts.
Serve immediately.
Makes about four servings.
Made of simple things, and it has a slight bite without going overboard. Rarely does my improvision go so well.
An issueblog I can get behind: readcomicsinpublic.net. I think anybody who knows me will tell you I've been doing exactly that for years. It certainly helps explain why my comic collection is so dog-eared.
In the same comics-related vein, I really like the ultra-short comic reviews being posted on this blog. I may start doing something similar. Because really, I need to find things to make posts about in this blog.
Hey Madison-area folks: who wants to go see Fairbanks in The Mark of Zorro (with a live organist!) for a buck next week?
A couple links deep from memepool, a story about the international sign-painters convention. I love the jam aspect of it--how cool would it be to get together with other game industry folks and make a game? I also live the sheer volume of trade slang, especially "wall dogs".
Three separate people have sent me a link to the campaign collecting AOL CDs to send them back to AOL HQ. Odds are you've seen it already or will soon, so I won't link to it here. Besides, you could find it if you really wanted to; you're clever like that.
I do however, find it interesting that such a sloppy website is standing up under the weight of Slashdotting. And that with it's international branches (!) the campaign has a Googlelock on "AOL CDs", and has just about taken the whole front page.
Further, who are these people that are so annoyed at the discs that they've hung on to thousands of them? I have one, but only because it has a neat Spider-Man logo printed on it. No way I'm giving that up.
Finally, let me get this straight: they're annoyed that AOL CDs are clogging up the mail. So what do they do: put a million discs back in circulation.
My theory: the whole thing is a ploy by the Postal Service to up revenues. Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong.
From today's cull of Metafilter:
- I'm having flashbacks to HiHo: Sanrio characters remaking the Blair Witch Project?
- French climber Alain "Spiderman" Robert didn't quite make it to the top of Canary Wharf in London this morning. Interestingly, he wasn't charged.
- Tom Cruise did wear a rope in the climbing scenes of MI2. I'll never trust DVD bonus material again.
- The West Wing Watch for this season and last season. Read with TWoP's recaps, you can talk about the series without ever watching an episode.
Something worth reading when you have the time: the transcript of the arguments before the Supreme Court in the Eldred copyright case.
Two last links, via boingboing, before I go collapse: It's awesome that there are smartcards that can hold 256MB. But it's even cooler that Phillips is preparing to take the next step with a 4-gig rewriteable optical disc designed for portable devices like cellphones and PDAs.
Also via boingboing, a question that's been on my mind for the last few weeks: When will Halloween be celebrated in Madison this year?
Neccesary but frightening article on how to stay safe in a sniper-danger area, from the Washington Post Online.
Lucas' producer Rick McCallum spells out how you could screw over Episode III. If you wanted to do that kind of thing. (via Blogdex)
(I put these links here for me as much for you; I'm too tired to read the pages right now.)
Poking around further reveals a Raffles novel I'd somehow missed up to this point, and an article on Raffles by George Orwell, of all people.
Found while looking for links for that last post: the University of Virginia's terrific library of online texts. I know there won't be one until bestsellers can come out for the hardware, but there are already hundreds of ebooks I'd read on a cheap and portable reader...
Thursday, October 17, 2002
Reading through the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen annotations I linked to last week, I was thrilled to see my favorite Victorian-era characters mentioned in one way or another, including The Twenty-One Balloons' William Waterman Sherman, The Thinking Machine, and A.J. Raffles (with strong hints that The Amateur Cracksman will be a member of the League in the next series!) Only Flashman is conspicuously absent, probably because George Frasier is still up and about writing*.
Those annotations led me to Peter Karpas' fantastic collection of comic annotations, even covering Captain Carrot! Time to dig out my Zoo Crew collection...
(Also found while surfing this evening was Inventing Comics, an interesting reaction to Scott McCloud. It's always good to see debate going on about something youlove at this deep a level. means there are other folks out there who take it just as seriously.)
* Let's pause for a moment and hope that Frasier sits down soon and writes the missing Flashman novel covering the rest of the American years, shall we?
A Liberty City desktop (1024x768) I made from an image found while poking around on the DMA--err, Rockstar North site.
Metafilter also pointed me to the fantastic site of Clayton Bailey. Fantastic techart, great pictures on his studiocam, and even the Popgun Manifesto.
My favorite line on the entire site: "He appears on the street outside the museum to demonstrate his uncanny abilities for an hour or two every Saturday and Sunday afternoon. His purpose is to intimidate human beings. The robot chases the children around the street and orders the adults to "go to the Museum"."
I've been to so many badbadbad Disney fan sites that I was stunned when MeFi pointed the way to The Sound of Magic. It's a beautiful site, and I'm really tempted to order a couple of his posters (of course, if the Disneyland Paris attraction posters were for sale, I think I would buy every last one. Except maybe Star Tours. But I'd buy two Adventure Island posters to make up for it.)
Apple has taken the "Switch" campaign to Japan. I admit to being surprised that the used exactly the same background music...
Wednesday, October 16, 2002
Last weekend I was talking with Trabbold (nice new domain, by the way!) about obscenely expensive consumer goods, the topic of a typically adroit post by Teresa last week.
Well, I've found a followup that's particularly Trabboldian in its attempt to cause cel envy: The World's Most Expensive Cel Phone (via boingboing.) Which I'm sure is great and all, but will it let me play Uno?
As Vice City goes Gold, the timer counting down how long I have to wrap up loose-thread projects before I become completely unproductive speeds up...
Tuesday, October 15, 2002
Good sniperblogging, including some interesting theories, on Unqualified Offerings (thanks to PNH for the pointer.)
See, now here the 'Tron is just baiting to see who the geeks are that know that's the license plate from Memento...
Damn.
Just saw this link to a Muslim group altering advertising on MeFi; just last night I was plotting out an SF story about a guy who does much the same thing. It's always interesting to see the real-life counterparts of the fictional people running around in your head.
Monkey rules on the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit: The Chinese Monkey King and his appearances on Chinese stamps, an interesting article on the Mystery Box--where philately and fiction collide.
This morning driving to work I was at a red light and suddenly, all Proust-like, I tumbled through the Wayback Machine to 1981:
It's a Saturday afternoon (apparently an off-week for cartoons and the Saturday Science Clubhouse at the museum), and I'm sitting on a blanket in the gym at my elementary school. Some enterprising group of parents has set up a movie program where they show a new movie every Saturday. They've already shown Willy Wonka (great, though not as good as the book, and the chicken thing was a little scary) and the Herbie movies (Ocho!), and today begins a month of Pippi Longstocking flicks. Popcorn: check. Dixie cup of pop: check. The parents corral the last of the chasing kids, turn off the lights, and the projector tick-tick-tick-tickticktickwhirrrrrrs into life...
There are moments when I wonder how I became the person I am today. And then there are moments I know.
I've heard mentions of it before, but this was the first time (via MeFi) that I've seen a good article on Hedy Lamarr's miltech patent. Interesting stuff.
Monday, October 14, 2002
In the battle against B&N, Borders may have just ensured my business as they install WiFi networks in their stores. Sweet.
Cross-posted to the Monkeyfan List, because I really want to know the answer:
Time for a science question:
Eveyone know the old Drinking Bird toy? A lot of good information--even the original patent drawing--can be found on this page. An explanation of how the Drinking Bird works is provided to the Net courtesy of Carnegie Mellon University.
What I want to know: is the principle behind the drinking bird scalable? That is, could I make a fifteen-foot high Drinking Bird? Because, really, how cool would that be?
UPDATE: Best Usenet post yet turned up in Google searches on the matter.
No, I don't know exactly what it means either, but thanks to Flynn for passing it along:
How can anything with a monkey be all bad?
From Dr. Pagel, a link to a pretty good video-game themed Photoshop thread on FARK. Man, do I wish that site would do something about its general visual appearance...
Sunday, October 13, 2002
I've continued to dig into the websites of TV music composers over the weekend, including the site of Jeff Beal, composer for USA's great show Monk. From there I made the jump to the site of the guitarist who plays the theme (MP3 link), Grant Geissman; from there I discovered that Geissman recently wrote a book on EC Comics (and has, in the past, done other books on Mad and EC.) I have to admit I didn't expect that.
Of course, as it turns out, Ted Levine and Jason Gray-Stanford, who play Monk cops Stottlemeyer and Disher, are also the voices of Sinestro and Donatello. So I guess geekiness is never far away.
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