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.

Home Again

Seeing as how this is easily the most widely read of my multiple blogs, I thought I'd summarize the state of air travel in the past two weeks, judging from my trip to California (blogged thoroughly at CA Blog).

The friendly skies are not friendly any more, but they are not unfriendly. If you consider that I was hitting the airways at a completely random time of the year, not in the middle of some holiday or other, I would take that as a snapshot of the industry as a whole; I saw nothing whatsoever of air rage or flared tempers or anything at ALL that is so popular to plaster all over the media these days.

At Montreal, where I was to board a 6:45 a.m. flight, the Delta agent at the counter was incredibly nice and we had some comments about the olden days of air travel, because I was in a pink jacket with a silk vintage tie and black shirt and most folk don't travel that way any more. I asked him if the pink jacket would be a problem anywhere and he said "Hell no, it's great to see someone dressed up like you are."

For some unknown reason the letters SSSS were stamped on my boarding card so at security, which was not very busy, I was pulled aside for a special check during which I was put through a body scanner and pretty much had to take off everything I was wearing. But everyone was very pleasant, and the CATSA guy who informed me that he had to look in my bag was very polite, and when I said "A lot of junk is probably going to fly out -- maybe we shouldn't do it on the conveyor" he didn't blink an eye, took the bag off to another table and patiently waited for me to get all my things back together before he let me open the bag. It was packed okay, although the bulk of it was my large camera case which was packed with gadgets: iPad, video camera, four lenses, cables, and other paraphernalia.

I explained to him what everything was even though he didn't ask me to, and I was quickly on my way. US customs was crowded due to the "sequester" but my agent was a very pleasant fellow who asked about my Pan Am bag and again, we reminisced about the golden days of air travel.

I even had the temerity to ask him what the designation SSSS meant, something technically maybe you shouldn't ask border personnel, but without a blink he said "Oh, it's just a random pullout for special screening." My left foot, but I'm all for profiling. I don't "look" Arabic but these days you don't have to, and I was in the right demographic (55) and who knows, maybe that day Al Qaeda was trying yet another one of their fucked up little experiments that only their ragheads and Neanderthal motivations could come up with.

And my flights, although not "fun" in the ordinary sense of the word, were okay -- to ATL and then LAX and then OAK, two legs of which were on regional jets, so everything was cramped as usual but I was delighted with the new innovation of FREE online Internet. I was, quite frankly, blown away. Now if they had only thought of a power plug in my seat I would have been in Heaven.

In fact, ALL the airports I was in had free, fast wi-fi, and for someone who likes to blog a sneeze, that was very pleasurable.

The walks between gates in some cases were a drag -- Minneapolis is easily the worst airport, up there with Dorval as being the airports with the most distance between gates (and gates and Immigration) but as long as you can walk you're okay.

The flights themselves were completely thrill-free, which is just how I like them, and all the pilots laughed at my worn out "Paper wasp in the pitot tube" joke (a practically new 757 was brought down by wasps having built nests in their pitot tubes, little things on the side of the plane that gauge airspeed and altitude -- somewhat important data for pilots to know) because the plane had been parked for three weeks at some airport in Costa Rica and no one had thought to cover them.

All in all, it's very good to know the system; to treat all the workers as the human beings they are; that in difficult situations like delays the operations personnel are just as anxious to get you on your way as you are and there is no point at all in making a fuss about something almost no one has any control over (weather delays) and to remember at all times that most of these people are making annual salaries (pilots as well) about equal to your average city bus driver.

Moral of the story: treat others as you would have them treat you in any and all occasions. And trust me, somehow you'll get from A to B. I promise you that.

Off to California

As you know by now, I create a blog when I take a shower. This one is no exception.