The parade of swag continues!

The fantastic Flannery Alden shipped me some swag in with the DVD's we loaned her back when she came to visit our fair city a few months ago. This box o' swag was all the more sweet because she had already brought us swag when she came in person so she's swagged us twice which is always nice. Here's a peek at some of the swag she sent:

That's right bee-otches, I now own a Flannery Alden original doodle and you don't. Jealous much? Boo ya!


I'm old enough to remember when microwave ovens were so new they had to have their own cookbooks. Here's one from the mid 1970's that Flannery sent me:
There are three things about this cookbook you need to know. First off is it's a loose leaf notebook style cook book, second it was put out by an electronics company which is always a bizarre thing, and third, I'll bet a million bucks that they cooked that food on the cover in a conventional oven. It's not only full of bad recipes and photos of bad food, it's got swell 1970's era illustrations and diagrams like this one:
But the culinary horror doesn't stop there because she also sent me this little booklet with all kinds of artery clogging recipes from the makers of Land O' Lakes butter, who's motto is, "If it doesn't have butter in it, then why the fuck would you eat it?"
Thanks much for the second swagging Flannery, you rock babe.

Back to school shopping?

Sure, you've loaded up on flannel shirts and Doc Marten's for the kids. And maybe you've laid in a supply of malt liquor, doughnuts, and downers for the teens in your life, but no angst ridden potentially suicidal teen is really ready to go back to school without his or her Kurt Cobain lunch box:
Kurt Cobain lunch boxes, they smell like teen spirit!

Garden bounty update

I got all of this except the cucumbers out of our garden today. We've still got butternut squash, zucchini, watermelons, tomatoes, peppers, fingerling potatoes, broccoli, and various herbs growing robustly in all the rain we've had over the past week.

And the best part is it's all pesticide, non organic fertilizer, and herbicide free.

Oh and for those of you who are crowing about the study that said there was no difference between organic food and food grown with pesticides and petroleum based fertilizers, I'd encourage you to find out who funded that study. It was probably Monsanto. And if it turns out to be a legit study, then by all means I encourage you to sprinkle some pesticide all over all your meals. I'll stick to eating food that's free from all the additives the corporate farms use thank you very much.

The book cover that grew up and made an ass of itself

Why Henry Sutton never won a Pulitzer prize for fiction is beyond me.

Burger magic!

Round burgers are sooooooo 1971.

(This illustration came from a 1972 edition of the Family Circle Illustrated Library of Cooking.)

There's no swag like monkey swag

My gal of the north country Whiskeymarie sent me this bit o' swag:
That's right, it says, "Dr. Monkey, MD" on it. Since I'm not one of those geeks who leave stuff in the original package in the hopes that it will go up in value, I took my new little guy out and let him roam a bit.
First, he jumped up on the tea shelf in the kitchen.
Then he jumped down into a bowl of chili peppers. He got really really hot in there so next he jumped into the fridge:
After cooling down he felt like he needed to be around some of his own kind so he ran into the living room and he started a conversation with this day of the dead monkey that my friend Keith got me.
The good doctor could not bridge the language barrier though, he's vowed to learn Spanish later as a result of this brief meeting. But finally he found a troop of monkeys he could hang with:
He says he feels right at home now.

Thanks for sending him to me Whiskeymarie, you rock!

It's good thing she isn't our President

Boy oh boy, Hillary is screwing up left and right in her job as Secretary of State. First she refuses to do the right thing and support the ousted President of Honduras and now she's threatening the British over a Gitmo detainee. You'd think she was Condi Rice or something.

We dodged a huge bullet when she failed to win the the Democratic party nomination.

Mystery solved

I wondered what was behind the rash of bad parking jobs in my town.

So I did some snooping and I came to the conclusion that those who are parking badly are also partaking of the dreaded 'SPECIAL DRINK' from Vision!
Damn upscale nightclubs, pray they never come to your town. Pray you'll never run afoul of those who have been imbibing in Happy Hour 3.8!

Cover of George W. Bush's newest biography released:

In an odd coincidence Dick Cheney was also going to use that title for his autobiography.

Olympic Profiles-The Gal With A Little Something Extra

Meet Stella Walsh:
She was born in Poland in 1911 and her name before it got Americanized when she came to the USA was Stanislawa Walasiewiczowna. Stella moved to the USA with her parents at the tender age of 3. As she grew and became assimilated to her new home she took to athletics, particularly track and field events. By the time she graduated high school it was obvious that she was a world class sprinter. She was considered the fastest woman in the world in the early 1930's.

As the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles neared Stella's life took an eventful turn. She wanted very badly to compete in the games for her adopted country, the USA, but since she would not be 21, the age when it was legal back then to become a naturalized citizen, by the time the women's track and field trials were going to be held the United States Olympic Committee told her she was ineligible to compete for the USA.

But even as things looked bleak, Stella was not to be denied a spot in those games in LA. The Polish government asked if she'd like to compete for her birth country and Stella readily agreed. She not only won gold in the 100 meter dash in 1932, she set a world record in doing so.

However it was in the Berlin games of 1936 where she was to make her biggest mark.

Stella was widely favored to repeat her winning ways in the 100 meter dash in Germany in 1936 but she ran into an obstacle named Helen Stephens, aka The Fulton Flash. For some reason Walsh felt compelled to spread the rumor that Stephens was actually a man. You see, back in those days before sophisticated gender testing the rule was that if a person had male sex organs then they were classified as a man, even if they also had a vagina as well, and they were not allowed to compete in the women's Olympic events. So almost from the start of the games Walsh was telling anyone who would listen that Stephens was really a man and that she had a penis. When they ran against each other in the 100 meter dash Stephens easily outran Walsh.

That's Stella on the left and Stephens on the right in the above photo.

As soon as the race was over Walsh cried foul. She said that no woman could have run that race as fast as Helen Stephens had just done so therefore she must have been a man. She and the Polish Olympic Committee demanded that Stephens be checked to see if she had a penis. In order to put the controversy to bed Stephens agreed and an impartial German doctor examined her. After seeing Ms. Stephens in her birthday suit, the German doctor quickly came to the conclusion that she was indeed a woman. Walsh was unhappy with the results of the physical given Stephens but she had to abide by the results.

Walsh competed as an amateur in track and field events until 1954. After 1954 she still did track and field events but only if she got paid. And since in those days one could not make a living off running, jumping, and throwing heavy metal objects and spears she took a job with the parks and recreation department in Cleveland, Ohio. She lived a quiet life through out the 1960's and '70's, even marrying for a brief period, and was elected into the US Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1975.

The final chapter of Stella's life was written in December 1980. She was doing a bit of shopping in a Cleveland area shopping center when she was struck and killed by a stray bullet that was fired during the commission of a robbery.

But her story does not end there.

The autopsy on Stella revealed that she had a penis. That's right, Stella, by the definition used by the International Olympic Committee in the 1930's, and up until very recently by the way, was a man. It turned out that Stella suffered from a medical condition called mosaicism, which is a condition where a person has both male and female genitalia and they possess both XX and XY chromosomes. So in the light of that information it's apparent why Walsh so loudly accused Helen Stephens of being a man, she did it to throw off any suspicions that might be cast her way. I imagine that she took evey precaution she could to keep anyone and everyone from getting a glimpse at her 'little something extra.' One can also easily see now why her marriage did not last. Some people cried for all her records to be wiped out since she had 'cheated' but cooler heads prevailed and she was allowed to keep in death what she had worked so hard for in life.

Barn of the week

This week's barn comes to us courtesy of Wings over at Caffeinated Joe. He snapped this photo of this cool barn in York, Maine. Thanks for thinking of me and taking that great picture Wings. Go Sox!

Cooking with Dr. Monkey

Today's episode: Manitoba Meltdown!

Or almond crusted trout fillets.

Our local Earth Fare, think of it as a less pricey Whole Foods, has been stocking local trout fillets lately and we've been enjoying them like nobody's beeswax. I finally hit upon a great way to prepare them the other night. I dredged the fillets in egg and then I coated them with crushed almonds that had been spiced up with crushed black pepper and Jamaican Jerk seasoning.

I then sauteed them in a tablespoon and a half of canola oil.
Before I cooked my trout I made a pepper sauce out by oven roasting half a red pepper and one third of a Cubanelle pepper. When the skin on the peppers was blackened I took the peppers out from under the broiler and I scraped some of it off. I then put the roasted peppers in a chopper (a mini food processor actually) with some olive oil and I blended it together.

The trout cooked quickly and once it was done I plated it. I served it along with some salad and some zucchini flat bread Sparky had made.
The pepper sauce was dipping the bread in or putting on the trout. I had mine on my trout and it was the perfect compliment to the delicate taste of the nut encrusted trout. It was all mighty tasty. Don't be afraid to cook trout fillets, they cook fast and are very healthy for you.

Wildlife picture of the week

I caught that rabbit in mid jump. Click to embiggenify the photo I took.

Exit the quitter

Raise your hand if you're a quitter who cynically used your family as props every chance you got during your self aborted political career.
Raise your hand if you were the most unqualified Vice President nominee in history and one who made Dan Quayle look like a mental giant in comparison to you.Raise your hand if you are intellectually incurious and if you couldn't give a shit about the issues as long as you look pretty and can rouse the rabble.
Now Miss Quitter, put your hand down and slink off to the FOX Noise channel where you'll fit right in with Mann Coulter, Mike Malkin, and Gomer Huckabee.

The reviews are in!

I tried out this series the other day:
I love this period in English history. I love all the back room maneuvering, the Byzantine backstabbing and jockeying, and the betrayals and betrothals that took place back then. But I didn't care for this series. My problems with it are as follows:

• All the actors and too clean and shiny. Bathing back in those days was not something people did that often.
  
• All the actors have bright clean perfectly perfect sets of teeth. Which of course is bullshit. Dental hygiene was unheard of back then and most certainly all of the people portrayed would have, when they reached the ages portrayed in this series, had yellow, or more likely, brown stained teeth. And some of then would be missing teeth as well.
• There not enough facial hair. Shaving back then was pretty hit or miss and most of the men in this show look too clean shaven.
  
• There's way too much cleavage, which don't get me wrong, I really liked seeing it but it just wasn't believable to me. Women back then were much more modest and the would not have been running around with their boobs half hanging out.
  

The show is well written and for the most part it's well acted but it's far too steeped in our modern day romantic notions of what we think it must have been like back then for it to be enjoyable to me. I was distracted by all the boobs, the clean shaven dudes, the pretty white teeth, and the lack of grunge.

I'll give the rest of it a pass.

Step Brothers is very funny and although it's also formulaic, it's also very enjoyable. It's a different kind of funny than Talladega Nights and that's a good thing.

As usual Ferrell and Reilly are very funny and so are all of the supporting cast. Mary Steenburgen as Will Ferrell's mom is really great, I love her in most everything I've ever seen her in. As good as those actors are, the movie is stolen by Kathryn Hahn who plays Will Ferrell's put upon and unloved sister in law who enters into an affair with Reilly's character. The scene where she declares her love for him and tells him she wants to roll him up in a tiny ball and keep him in her warm vagina forever is priceless, as is the scene where they get it on during Christmas dinner.

The special features on this one are fun as well. The 'making of' featurette is funny, as are the gag reel and the line-o-rama. I highly recommend this silly comedy.

One of the benefits of living so close to my local library is that I can go there pretty much anytime I want, except on Sundays during the summer because it's closed then. Another benefit is the head of my local library is a comic book geek who is also a friend and having a comic book aficionado at the helm of my library means that our local library is full of great graphic novels like the one pictured above.

I was unfamiliar with the character of The Goon so I had no expectations going in when I checked out this graphic novel. After reading it and soaking it in, I can tell you it's a fantastic story and the art is really great. It takes place during the Depression era so it makes sense that the vast majority of the art is done in a various sepia tones. The author, Eric Powell, gives you just enough dialogue to keep the story going but he relies heavily on wordless panels to get even more of the story across and those wordless panels often say more then a panel with words in it ever could.

I can't recommend this graphic novel more highly. It's really really good. And if you never read a graphic novel or think you might like to try one, then you really can't go wrong with this one.

Bele Chere 2009

Bele Chere is a street festival that's held the last full weekend in July in Asheville, NC. It's chock full of artists selling their wares, non profits trying to get you to get into their message, food vendors, and much more. My favorite part of the whole shebang is the watching the people who attend the soiree, I love to watch and make up stories about them in my head as they go by.

We, Sparky and I that is, do Bele Chere every year and we always seem to go on Saturday during the hottest part of the day. Sometimes we can talk some of our friends into going but this year we went solo. It was pretty hot but not as hot as it has been in years past.

This kid was typical of how people dressed their babies this year:However most other people gave their babies food or something to chew on, these folks were going in a different route. Good for them, gnawing on an empty tray will build character in that kid some day.

Speaking of food, I'm pretty sure those hippies fried the chicken and tater tots in Patchouli oil and they laced the waffles with Mary Jane.

Here's a brief summary of some the things I learned at this year's event:
Video games are not just for inside play anymore.

Some white guys can't keep their shirts on, no matter how much other white guys want them to. And by other white guys I mean me.

Kids with hair-dos like this always crack me up.

Turns out that the long lost black member of Dexy's Midnight Runners was not an urban legend after all. He's real and he was in Asheville yesterday.

The gal at the candy apple/fudge/ice cream booth is kind of okay with fat bastards who take her picture. And by fat bastards I mean me.

Some people have waaaay more balls (or in this case ovaries) than me. This chick was doing a karaoke version of Little Drummer Boy. It was Christmas in July for about three minutes.

I also learned that douchebags come in all manner of shapes and sizes. Here's 'Hong Kong Phooey Douchebag':
Here's 'Jesus Hates Anyone Who Isn't White Douchebag':
And finally we have 'Hey Look At Me, Aren't I Super Clever and Amusing Douchebag(s)':
I also learned that buskers are everywhere.

Hey look, it's the little drummer boy:
It's the angsty guitar girl:
And finally we have the white noise busker:
I also learned that superheroes walk amongst us and they dig ice cream just like we do:
But the biggest thing I learned from this year's Bele Chere was that you can take the granny out of the trailer park, but you can't take the trailer park out of the granny:
I'm betting she was on her way to eat some of that patchouli fried chicken, get the letters 'G-I-L-F' tattooed on her lower back, or to see if Spiderman would shower her in a stream of his hot wet 'webbing.'

Oh Bele Chere, how I love you and I'm already looking forward to seeing you again next year!

Public Option My Ass

I've decided that if we don't get a single payer Canadian/European style health care plan out of this heath care reform overhaul then I am not supporting whatever corporate approved plan Congress gives us. Fuck a public option, fuck anything but single payer health insurance for all Americans. The Canadian/European models are not perfect but they are the best thing for everyone. If we don't get single payer, then we need to find ways to throw monkey wrenches in the system until it breaks or goes bankrupt.

We found enough money to pay for two unnecessary wars and to subsidize corporate corn and sugar farms that wreck our environment, it's high fucking time we found enough money to give all our citizens health care that includes dental and mental care too.

SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE NOW!