The Summer Roll/My Feet Hurt like Fuck Update

The good news: Wow. Those rolls, even though I ate them not 'alf an hour ago, are calling to me ALREADY for a late-night snack.

The bad news: They were a fucking bitch to make. I had to bring my laptop, the latest in a series of horrorshows, in to be looked at on Jean-Talon (non-Montrealers, just tune out. It's far enough to be annoying). Had to take the metro for the first time in several years because Brigitte has now been just about reduced to not being able to drive. Still, it was a magnifico day, but I did an awful lot of walking -- I hate to be the hypochondriac but my heels are screaming for two triple injections of novocaine as I type. I'd rather have a root canal, and now I understand the excruciating horror Brigitte goes through in her daily effort to move around (no, we still don't know what's wrong but we have an appointment with the Montreal Neuro next week).

After I dropped that off, I walked ten blocks to our old favorite Vietnamese to get some satay sauce, since Brigitte thought the stuff I served last night was too "curry-like." Nooo problem -- I still have my Naga Jolokia sauce and that's what I put on my summer rolls anyway, so it don't matter to me what she likes on hers (for the record, it was extremely bland).

So I walked another half-mile to the Asian store to get all the ingredients (photos and recipe tomorrow, I promise) and by the time I got home I was pretty walked-out. But then I spent the next seven hours preparing the rolls (I'm slow, but also with many interruptions).

But the good news made it all worth it. I bought some horrible cheap saké, which I will never buy again except as a liniment, but the rolls were exquisite.

Now I just have to find my way to drink myself into oblivion to get rid of this pain. I swear, if they did root canals on feet, I'd be at the front of the line.

One more can of 7% lemon "Popper" or maybe two, two arthrotec and two Zopiclone and maybe all will be right with the world.

Oh -- last good news -- this is being typed in bed on my brand-new, deeper-in-credit MacBook.

Preparing for the Summer Roll Extravaganza

Last night I made Gỏi cuốn (Vietnamese fresh spring rolls, also called Summer rolls) -- and they were a great success, although I had made them before, albeit a very long time ago.

The trick is in the rolling of them. They can turn out to be a misshapen, lumpy mess, but I came up with a masterful trick that made them a breeze, and they turned out amazingly well. I remember a long time ago I ordered "Spring rolls" in a Vietnamese restaurant, expecting them to be the deep-fried kind, and I was very disappointed when the fresh ones came. 

But years later, while was a vegetarian for a year or so, I really got into these things -- they're little salad bombs that you can fill with all sorts of different ammunition, then dip in whatever you want. Traditionally, satay (peanut) sauce is the usual dip, but last night I put a little Ghost Pepper in my dip, and wow, that made everything nuclear.

But I loved it so much that tomorrow I'm going to make ten of them. That's going to be dinner! That and a Thai salad.

Here's a picture I grabbed from the Web of what they ideally should look like but tomorrow I'll document the whole thing and deliver the Master recipe!

Keep your eyes (and vegetables) peeled.

What they should look like, but no promises!

An Atomic Apology

I was very mean a while back when I posted a picture of George Michael and titled the post “What does an atom look like?”

Since then literally hundreds of well-meaning people (possibly children!) have come by search to that page, only to find my idiotic post.

Well, I’m here to rectify a few things. The basic answer is, even if you wanted to, you can’t “see” an atom.

An atom is composed of a nucleus, which contains protons and neutrons. This nucleus is surrounded by electrons, which cannot be seen under any circumstances. This is because electrons are never in the same place — they are in ALL places at the same time. Unbelievably, they don’t “move” around the nucleus as we know it, but go from place to place without passing through space — they simply disappear and reappear simultaneously.

Although an atom might be considered “spherical” in a sense, it actually is just a mass kind of like a very fuzzy tennis ball.

One remarkable aspect of an atom is that it is mostly composed of empty space.

It has been compared to a pea in the center of a cathedral, where the pea is the nucleus, and the cathedral is the orbiting electrons. However, in this case, the “pea” weighs orders of magnitude more than the cathedral.

The basic working arrangement of the atom is the molecule. A molecule is simply two or more atoms working together in a more or less stable arrangement: add two atoms of hydrogen to one of oxygen and you have a water molecule.

At sea level, at a temperature of 32 degrees F (freezing point), one cubic centimeter of air (about the size of a sugar cube) outside your window will contain 45,000,000,000,000,000,000 (45 billion billion) molecules.

And it has been suggested that every living human on earth contains at least several billion atoms that were once a part of Genghis Khan, William Shakespeare, Moses, and yes, even Jesus.

But if you really want to “see” what an atom looks like, you might take a look at this image produced by IBM a while back with a scanning electron microscope in which they purportedly managed to spell the letters “IBM” out of individual atoms.

But I still like to think of an atom looking like George Michael.

Absolutely Hitlerious

Notice anything in particular about this house, which, out of a whole neighborhood in England, was spared from the bombing raids in WWII?

Those German bombardiers certainly had great vision!

Gratifying

Well, it's truly gratifying that someone sitting less than five feet away from me and playing games on another computer thought that it was a master bluesman playing (and he knows his blues) on a music track I just put on suddenly with no warning and just started playing on top of.

"Who was that?" he said after the track and I said "Phantom Blues Band."

"Hell of a guitar player."

I shut down immediately and played Matt Dusk and never did tell him. Yes, very gratifying.

The Year from Hell that just Refuses to Go Away

Used to be a time when there was something called TV. That used to be a thing with a few channels on it that didn't have things crawling all over the screen in the middle of a program, which was usually a program that was on heavy rotation on ALL the channels with the occasional all-day marathon. You know, 12 hours straight of Two and a Half Assholes.

Used to be a time when there were newspapers, some that actually reported things. No, the front page of each is BLASTING what's on the inside, and that takes care of that page. And politics takes nothing to cover so they can take that and sports and comics and Voilà! There's a "newspaper!"

And the internet. Yes, well, I couldn't live without it, but we pay something like 10 times what they pay in England. I find myself going to the same ten-odd sites, day after day. I don't listen to music any more because most of it is Lady Gaga/Beyonce/Hip-Crap that could very easily be put completely together by a clever composing machine (believe me, the time will come, if it hasn't already).

But I'm riveted by a wave of intelligence that's sweeping the world. I'm talking about the Arabs, of course. Like they're waking out of a long nightmare in which the words "Insh'allah" control everything they do and have ever done.

To stretch a simile, it's the "tsunami" that's finally coming home to roost in the Arab world. It is a very, very good thing to see. It's a hard thing to watch entire countries still mired in the middle ages . . . did you know that the only two countries on earth to go from practically pre-industrial to leaders of the world in quality of life, industry and secularism within the space of a hundred years and are in the top ten of overall quality of life are Sweden and ISRAEL? Israel made a paradise out of the same tracts of desert that the Palestinas live on WITHOUT ISRAELI OIL and WHERE are the rich oil kingdoms when it comes to accepting Palestinian immigration? One word: NIMBY. Corruption should be in EVERY ARAB COUNTRY'S OFFICIAL NAME. Like, "The Corrupt Republic of Saudi Arabia . . . ." need I go on? Oh sure, corruption happens everywhere, but not on such BIBLICAL LEVELS.

Have the words "The Saudi National Aerospace Consortium is on the verge of sending an exploratory mission to Jupiter?" ever crossed your eyes?

"Palestinians judged most accurate people in the world at rock-throwing, the Arabic Olympic tournament shows. Three out of the top three medals go to a Palestinian, a Yemeni and a Libyan. In the pirate ship-boarding assault games, the Somalians came in decisively tops, with all ten contingents winning at least one medal."

Have you ever seen the words "Dubai Consortium (they all seem to be consortiums) send $3.4 billion in medical aid to stricken Japan, including floating hospitals, aid stations, and public assistance?

Nope. You see "Burj Dubai hotel tower tallest structure in the world; one night's stay in a stateroom will run you $8,500." And you see "Israel rushes substantial medical resources to stricken regions in Japan."

Have you ever seen a Japanese Israeli? If you have, I've got a photo of a blue tiger to look at.

Believe you me, I predict this year from Hell is JUST GETTING STARTED.

Heh. Some consolation comes from articles like these that show the shrieking Fatwa fuckwads for what they truly are.

The Downright Horror that is a Canadian Election

No one CARES. It's as if all the used car dealers in Canada decided to hold a contest for "Best selling Gran Torino in 1993."

Right. First it makes no sense and second, that's just how important it is.

I say cancel Canada as a country and ship it to Antarctica.