Overrun

This blog has been officially taken over by a CAT

and

there is

NOTHING

I

can

DO

about it.

My Personal Steve

He's mine . . . and he watches over me.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Buy overpriced computers.

Am I Insanely Great, or What?

Can't Wait for Bill to Join Me

That's Not a Polar Bear Rug -- That's Foam Core

Patraits

On Wednesday, my good friend and collaborator on this site (Ironman) drove in from Ottawa and we had a jolly time driving around. We made it to Atwater market, at which I went to Douceurs du Marché and spent a cringe-inducing $78 or so on a bottle of Frantoia olive oil and a bottle of truffle oil. What can I say? These things have to be done.

And afterwards we taxied over to L'Express to delight in what only L'Express can do -- the best steak-frites in North America. NOBODY does it better. Their rare (saignant) onglet (hanger) steak is just the beefiest beef in the world.

Don't be fooled by promises of "Kobé" beef (I've said it once, and I will say it again and again until my last dying breath: there is NO KOBÉ beef in North America and there never will be. Any restaurant that advertises Kobé ANYTHING is lying, lying, lying. Even the one that offer "Wagyu" beef are usually lying their hides off). The L'Express steak-frites is about the best steak you will ever enjoy, period.


Anyway, Patrick brought his Nikon rig and did me the honor of taking a couple of "portrait" shots of me, which is extremely rare, as I don't know anyone who is a friend and who lives in Montreal and who is a good photographer, so there are very few portraits of me anywhere.

Patrick took a couple of "Patraits" and I messed with them in Photoshop a bit and here they are, in no particular sequence (as usual, right click on them to open in a new window to get them at full resolution):

At L'Express

Half colored man

Monet man

Thank you, my good friend, for such wonderful records of yours truly. One day I shall return the favor except sans the Photoshop mucking about.

Whipped Cat

I can't believe this kitten actually likes the coffee-flavored whipped cream on the rim of my cup . . .

Catsformation

When Brigitte disappeared to Israel May 1 or so (to return July 2) poor ol' Nick got lonesome.

Lonesome enough to check out the pet ads and respond to one for kittens -- there was a black one that sounded really great. So I taxied all the way to Cartierville to pick up the little runt, only to find out that she was, like, only four weeks old.

For those who don't know cats, this is, like, WAY too young to take a kitten away from its mother. It needs at LEAST another month.

But I, being the "cat expert" I thought I was, took her anyway. I named her Pika, which means "flash" in Japanese.

Well, we already have a cat, Lulu, who is about 6 years old. And I quickly found myself overwhelmed. This little kitty was so young it would have to be fed with an eye dropper every four hours. And I was looking at a month of this. So I put an ad on a bulletin board and someone responded and came and picked up Pika that very night. Thank God for Sue!

So that, I thought, was that. I was actually in tears when I handed her over to her new owner.

But apparently, she thrived. I had asked Sue to keep me up to date with photos etc. and she did exactly that.

But then two days ago, I got a totally surprise email: Sue and her companions were going on a wilderness trek for a few weeks -- would I take Pika (whom they had renamed Madonna)?

Well, garsh, OF COURSE I would take her. Sue told me I was the only one she could trust -- that made me feel pretty good.

So now, as I type, there is a fuzzy little monster roaming the halls of this quiet house . . .

I wanted to document her for Brigitte, but she is AS BLACK AS A LUMP OF COAL and is almost impossible to film. All that shows up are her little beady yellow eyes. That used to be blue.

This morning I filmed her, and by coincidence, I was playing her with the same little USB cord that I was playing with her the first time I filmed her -- almost two months ago.

So, here you see two visions of the same cat, in the same location, playing with the same thing just two months apart. Note how her eyes are BLUE in the first video and YELLOW in the second (it's not easy to see, but you can go here to see ol' Blue Eyes) . . .

Summer Rainstorm With Brahms Conducting

Be sure to watch it at 1080p.

Not Today

I'm taking my meds today, so there will be no posts until they've worn off.

Skewering Time; First of a Series

Where were YOUR ancestors while this was happening?

The world's treatment of the Jews during WWII was absolutely appalling, on a par with that of the Nazis themselves.

The Catholic church was a major contributor to anti-semitism and wept crocodile tears while watching millions of Jews being dragged off to the slaughter.

Countries turned away ships full of escaping Jews who had nowhere to turn and in some cases they were forced to go back to Germany. England imposed strict quotas on the numbers of Jews allowed into Palestine and America wasn't much better.

The amazing hypocrisy of the United States to intern whole rafts of Japanese Americans while confiscating their property yet doing nothing of the sort with the German Americans is breathtaking in its cynicism.

Basically, the rest of the world looked on as the Jews burned -- the so-called "Good War" was only good if you were white and American or British.

And after the war, the Catholic church provided many, many vicious animals like the Kommandant of Treblinka, Franz Stangl with "ratlines" to third countries, issuing them with false papers, which is why so many human butchers ended up in places like Uruguay and Argentina. Josef Mengele, for one, Adolf Eichmann for two.

Still worship the Catholic God? Well, they just switched from protecting vicious, mass-murdering  Nazis to abusing small children -- no major difference in levels of barbarity.

The whole of the Allied world was fully aware of the death camps but they did nothing to intervene whatsoever and indeed, aided the Nazis in the extermination by making it so difficult for the Jews to find a place to hide.

According to Wikipedia:

"Antisemitism in the United States reached its peak during the 1920s and 1930s. The pioneer automobile manufacturer Henry Ford propagated antisemitic ideas in his newspaper The Dearborn Independent. During the 1940s, the pioneer aviator Charles Lindbergh and many other prominent Americans led the America First Committee in opposing any involvement in the war against fascism. Following a visit to Germany in 1936, Lindbergh (that fucking slimeball) wrote: "While I still have my reservations, I have come away with great admiration for the German people... Hitler must have far more vision and character than I thought… With all the things we criticize he is undoubtedly a great man…" 

Forget Rwanda. Almost the entire world was responsible for the Holocaust, and it's extremely convenient to forget that little detail when we examine the shameful history of the behavior of the Allies.

Here's a "heroic" account of one of the Allies' stunts (that's you and me, people, unless you're Nazis):

"The MS St. Louis was a German ocean liner most notable for a single voyage in 1939, in which her captain, Gustav Schröder, tried to find homes for 937 German Jewish refugees after they were denied entry to Cuba, the United States and Canada, until finally accepted to various countries of Europe. Historians have estimated that, after their return to Europe, approximately a quarter of the ship's passengers died in concentration camps."

What the world tends to forget is that the physicists who made up the bulk of the team at Los Alamos and who basically invented the atomic bomb and stopped WWII were primarily European-Jewish émigrés, such as Leo Szilard, a Hungarian Jew who first proposed to Einstein that he write to President Roosevelt and raise the alarm the the Germans might get the atomic bomb first.

IF NOT FOR THESE PEOPLE WE WOULD ALL BE SPEAKING GERMAN, JAPANESE OR BOTH.

As much as I despise the Japanese for their role in the war, it can't be said that it hunted down and mercilessly exterminated the members of any particular ethnic group, unless, of course you happen to be Chinese or Korean.

Take a GOOD LOOK at this documentary, and PLEASE BUY IT so that it will support the makers and keep spreading the message:

Listen especially the words of Niklas Frank, son of Hans Frank, the human demon sent personally from Hell who was the Governor-General of Poland during the war, who was once quoted as saying "But what should we do with the Jews? Do you think they will be settled in Ostland, in villages? We were told in Berlin, 'Why all this bother? We can do nothing with them either in Ostland or in the Reichskommissariat. So liquidate them yourselves.' Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourself of all feelings of pity. We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find them and whenever it is possible."

I for one will not let this rest. I'm not Jewish, Catholic or any religion and the only connection I have with WWII is that my father proudly BOMBED THE FUCK out of the Nazis and probably had a lot of fun doing it, to which of course he would never have admitted.

So what the fuck does all this have to do with YOU, you ask?

Well, in less than ten years the last survivors of the Holocaust, who were only little children back then, will all be dead. The will be no one left alive to be able to say, "I was there."

And you should carry the responsibility for their sufferings along with you until YOUR last breaths.

But don't worry, lest you forget, I will always be here to tirelessly remind you.

If I Were a Sculptor . . . Then Again, No

Lurker swarm surprised under a Windows PC

I'd be an executioner. And the first to go under Madame Guillotine would be YOU, the lurkers.

That's right, you quivering balls of spineless indecision. How do you go through your days, wringing your hands together as you shamble along the silent sidewalks, glancing furtively over your shoulder for some unseen assailant that MIGHT JUST POP OUT OF THE SHADOWS and ASK YOU FOR A CIGARETTE?

You get your vampiristic BLOOD-SUCKING JOLLIES just FEEDING ON MY outpourings of vitriol understated with a VAST HUMOUR you wouldn't recognize if JIMMY HOFFA ROSE FROM HIS CONCRETE TOMB AND WHACKED YOU WITH IT.

Yes, it's time to put out my MANIFESTO about you cowardly, misanthropic, microcephalic TROGLODYTES who, if struck one day with an ACTUAL OPINION would fall, slavering and moaning to the floor in a FIT OF TRICHOTIILOMANIA incurable by any of your Levadopa or Lithium or Thallium or whatever it is the guys in the white coats FEED YOU JUST TO KEEP YOU CONSCIOUS.

With your PRE-CAMBRIAN epithalamuses working HYPERTIME to spew out a semi-coherent pseudo-thought once in a year of Sundays I suppose it's HARDLY TO BE EXPECTED that you should expose your bone-china-white flesh that hasn't seen sunlight in decades, and, GOLLUM-LIKE, actually grunt forth an ACTUAL OPINION about what it is YOU READ and I WRITE HERE.

YOU'RE SO FATHEADED THAT YOU PUT MAYONNAISE ON YOUR ASPIRINS. YOUR MOTHER SHOULD HAVE THROWN YOU AWAY AND KEPT THE STORK.

I told you, ya lurking bunch of goth-wannabe benthic-zone dwellers, YOU HAVE GEORGE BUSH'S APPRECIATION FOR GOOD WRITING and also HIS TASTE IN WOMEN'S UNDERWEAR.

You would not know how to spell C-A-T if your fucking NAME WAS CATHERINE and if you stumbled upon a treasure map with a huge "X MARKS THE SPOT" on it YOU'D GET OUT THE FUCKING OXI-CLEAN.


Who ARE you, ya scuttling bedbugs that drop by for a dose of HEALTHY MIND EXPANSION and leave not ONE FUCKING NOTE of appreciation for the hundreds of thousands of words, 80% of who are being READ BY YOU FOR THE FIRST TIME, WHOSE DICTIONARIES ARE ON SPEED-DIAL, who can't even put forth a mumbling "Can't you stop swearing all the time?"

YES. YES!!!! That would count as an actual comment! It would count as an OPINION! Something with which you seem to have only a NODDING ACQUAINTANCE!

Well, batten down the hatches, ya lurking three-celled brachiopods, because this is only JUST THE BEGINNING.

Fuck, my caps-lock key is now SO OVERHEATED that it wants to have sex with the space bar.

No More Mr. Nice Guy

You have spoken, and I have heard you. But NOW HEAR THIS:

I used to be such a sweet, sweet thing
'Til they got a hold of me.
I opened doors for little old ladies,
I helped the blind to see.
I got no friends 'cause they read the papers.
They can't be seen, with me and I'm gettin' real shot down
And I'm feeling mean.

No more Mister Nice Guy
No more Mister Clean
No more Mister Nice Guy
They say, he's sick he's obscene

I got no friends 'cause they read the papers.
They can't be seen, with me and I'm gettin' real shot down
And I'm, I'm gettin' mean.

No more Mister Nice Guy
No more Mister Clean
No more Mister Nice Guy
They say, he's sick he's obscene

My dog bit me in the leg today
My cat clawwed my eyes
Mom's been thrown out the social circle
And dad has to hide
I went to church, incognito
When everybody rose, the Reverand Smith,
He recognized me,
And punched me in the nose
He said,

No more Mister Nice Guy
No more Mister Clean
No more Mister Nice Guy
He said, you're sick, you're obscene

For those with pacemakers PLEASE HAVE THEM ADJUSTED BEFORE VISITING THIS PAGE.

FINAL NOTICE

I just shut this blog down for a few days to weed out the random idiots, of whom, it seems, there are legion.

I'm in a leaner, meaner frame of mind. That means no dealing with idiots and morons. I hate that so many people come here because of long-dead posts . . . hopefully the cutting off of "visible to search engines" should put a stop to the random rabble that comes by here.

Basically I'm a bit pissed off at having a random audience of idiots. You would not believe the search terms that bring idiots here . . .

So, I'm hoping that proportion of Internet rabble will disappear. If they keep coming, I'll shut down the blog again, until they finally give up and stop coming. If I knew who my loyal readers were, I'd put you on a list and allow just you to read this blog.

If you want to put yourself on that list, do so by emailing me at nick(at)montrealfood(dot)com and I'll add you to the list of readers. Then I'll shut the blog down and only you will be able to read it.

Basically, I have a lot to say, but I want to start minimizing my Internet footprint and I'd rather just address people who are interested instead of the large group of transients which this blog currently attracts. I'd just as soon delete the entire blog and start again, but I won't do that, because there is so much on it that is useful and maybe funny and it has been almost 8 years since I first posted.

So if you wish to remain a reader, a simple email will suffice. I'll wait about thirty days and then shut it down again, this time permanently, at least to the non-readers.

Got it? If I have a small hard core of readers I can post much more interesting and personal stuff which ail interest just us and not a traveling coterie of indigent web crawlers.

You have been warned.

One Froggy Morning

Select 1080pHD for the best picture!

Gewinnen Standardmäßig

Ich habe leider meine Faszination mit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg wieder aufgenommen. Schade nicht für mich, sondern für Sie, denn wahrscheinlich haben Sie hier für ein Rezept für Thai-Curry kommen. Nun, Sie gonna haben, um nach einem Rezept für Schnitzel begleichen. Schlecht, hergestellt, auch.

Dieses Mal ist es eine Biographie von Paladin von Hitler, Hermann Göring. Eine unbeholfene, Fett-Finger, gierig, Greifen, bösartigen Stück Deutsche porkiness kann unmöglich vorstellen. Wenn er nicht über diese unglaublich cobra-like Bösartigkeit tief in seiner Persönlichkeit, leicht von den Persönlichkeiten der Himmler und Heyderich (lasst Adolf verlassen aus ihm abgestimmt - er war ein verdammter hoffnungsloser Fall aus dem Tag, als er in die Welt ausgeworfen wurde ), dann könnte man ihn als den "comic relief" von Nazismus zu sehen.

Oh, versuchte er, aber er war zu beschäftigt vergewaltigen Europas Kunstschätze zu viel Aufmerksamkeit auf den Krieg zu zahlen.

In der Tat, aus dieser Biographie Sicht, waren die Nazi-Oberkommando (all die üblichen Verdächtigen) eine solche Mischung von inkompetenten Idioten, dass es eine große Wunder, dass sie überall bekam überhaupt ist. Stellen Sie sich vor Hitler eine "soft spot" für England, dadurch verzögerte sich seine geplante Invasion statt Schlagen gegen den "Flathead" Bolschewiki, den er sicher zu seinen Füßen wurde kriechen würde nach ein paar Tagen der Bombardierung. Ja, Dolfy, wie, uh-huh.

Er war in der Tat eine solche komische inkompetent Taktiker, dass es das Gerücht, dass ist nach einem Historiker, es wurde ausdrücklich durch die Alliierten für Hitler ermordet zu werden verboten, weil sie tödliche Angst, dass jemand waren - jeder - wer seinen Platz könnte tatsächlich besitzen ein Gehirn und damit weit eher in den Strategien des Krieges durchsetzen. Rommel, geben ein gutes Beispiel.

Hitler war so ein microcephalic doofus, dass alles, was er nach seinem ersten erstaunlichen Siegen berührt all wandte sich führen, Einer nach dem anderen, jede mögliche Entscheidung, die er machte, war die falsche.

Gott sei Dank, nicht wahr? Ansonsten, und ich würde wahrscheinlich "sprechen zie Deutsch."

Miracle Camera With The Ugly Name

Through the miracle of a camera of whose existence I was unaware until very recently, I took this little video of an outing to Atwater market. But this little thing, which I managed to hustle for only around $25 on eBay, takes fantastic 1080p HD videos -- up to two hours' worth at a time, although I've never tried it that long -- and is smaller than an iPhone. It even has a snap out USB plug and takes seconds to upload a movie to your computer. And as I just did a search, I realized that mine is almost the first, if not THE first of these beasts.

I did mix this in iMovie, I must admit, but do go gaga over how far technology has come. Last year I bought a Canon MiniDV HV10, which, with all its tapes and cables and such, doesn't hold a candle to this little thing.

Be sure to watch this full screen on YouTube and choose the 1080p setting. Your connection might buffer a bit, but it's worth it. And the subject matter is not the best, nor the camerawork -- but the sheer ease in which it was all done is what's impressive about it. Not to mention that it cost me under $30.

Lessons

The past is there to be examined in infinite detail. Just what you just finished doing not half an hour ago is done; it cannot be undone, no matter by what process you propose. something that you did with the immediate intention of undoing can, at best, be put back into a semblance of its former self.

This is inarguably impossible. once done, no matter how tiny, a thing cannot be back as it was exactly the moment you did it. Some details will invariably be overlooked. even under controlled, scientific conditions, what is done IS DONE FOREVER, be it on a molecular or even atomic level.

You simply cannot duplicate something which is past, no matter how hard you try.

The further, however, is very much in YOUR HANDS. What is not yet does not exist -- you CAN change the future. In front of you is an apple; you might take a bite of it, or you might not. If you decide to, you have just created a past state that is irrevocable. IF YOU DO NOT DO so, however, the apple will be there, sitting on the table, exactly the same as it was a minute ago. Whole, unbroken by you -- indeed, completely unmoved from its position of just one minute ago.

But regrettably, while it seems unchanged, it has changed on ten billion levels, just in the minute you have sat watching it. Its atoms have been busy, infinitely busy, rearranging themselves. Not ONE SINGLE atom of that apple remains in the same state that it had been in one minute ago, except in your slow and impossibly limited powers of observation.

Now once we accept that the past is the past and is unchangeable, and that the future is infinitely changeable, possibilities radiating out in ten trillion different directions DEPENDING UPON WHAT YOU DECIDE TO DO OR NOT DO AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT, it must give one pause to reconsider the past.

Because now, because now that it IS the past, we are presented with an opportunity to consider what WOULD have happened or NOT happened, had you, or someone else, or something beyond your control, had not intervened.