Category Archives: Culture

Death by salt? Yes, please!

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I saw a link on Lifehacker a while ago about how to make your steak taste better when you are barbequeing.  The beauty of this tip is the simplicity: salt. You take your steak out of the fridge an hour or so before you cook it and completely cover it on both sides with sea salt.  Literally.  It sounds crazy, but bear with me.  You salt the sucker and let it sit for 15 minutes at least on the counter.  Then, rinse off the salt under the tap and dry the steak off with paper towels.  Then cook as usual.

We tried this with a very cheap steak and it tasted like a million bucks.  It was not over-salted by any means, if you normally use even the smallest amount on your steak it will taste just fine.  Apparently this works best on thick steaks (1″), but we did it on a fairly thin T-bone and it was tender and delicious.  Anyway, this is something you should definitely give a try.  Probably not that great for your blood pressure, but how often are you eating steak?  Really?  That often?  Wow, what a carnivore.

Teacher fired for not turning students into mindless bible-bots

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Oh man.

A teacher in Iowa was fired for telling his students to interpret the bible, not read it literally.  Whatever you do, fellow citizens of Iowa, don’t think for yourself, the Bible has already done all the thinking you are ever going to need.

“….he encouraged students to look beyond a literal interpretation of what is an “extremely meaningful story”, because he thought a literal reading would miss much of the poetic, metaphoric and symbolic content.”

“…he had a conversation with a student in which he referred to the story of Adam and Eve as a fairy tale.”

That’s probably the nail in the coffin right there.  What a sad state of affairs.

This is at the college level, and in a western civilisation course.   Of course the school can’t be blamed for putting the “mental” in fundamentalism, can it?  This kind of scary assed thinking isn’t limited to the US of course, but it’s hard to imagine it happening in Canada.  Isn’t it?

And now a word from our sponsor…

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Yes, I’m still blogging about the Dukes of Hazzard, at least peripherally. It’s hard to describe just how big an impact that show has had on the boys. You really have to see it to understand it. Every game they play together, even if it’s not Duke-related, is punctuated by Yee-haws and Roscoe chuckles. There are regular renditions of “Good Old Boys”. I’m peppered by questions about how the General Lee can jump over things but the van can’t (but why not?). Here’s another subtle change this television program has wrought on our household.

Up until now, the lads have been watching shows we record from Teletoon, almost exclusively. As a result, they have never really seen an honest to goodness commercial before watching the Dukes. On top of that, the commercials happen at the end of each show on Teletoon, so the mid-show interruptions are a revelation to the boys. Add to that the microscopic focus with which Quinn does anything, and you have the conversations like the following happening regularly:

Quinn: Did you know you can put Cheez Whiz on nachos?
Me: No! Really?
Quinn: Yeah, and you can put it on tomato soup, too.
Me: You don’t say…
Quinn: Yeah, and it’s in a teacup.
Me: Wow.

or:

Quinn: We should get this blue stuff for the bathroom.
Me: Oh yeah?
Quinn: Yeah, you can use it to clean the tub. It’s got a narrow tip so it can reach tight corners.
Me: Huh.

or inexplicably:

Quinn: I want to get the makeup that doesn’t clog your pores.

Keep in mind that these helpful anecdotes are thrown in randomly and regularly in conversation, and they never fail to crack Nik and I up.

Erector Spykee, indeed

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Living vicariously through my children is definitely one of the best parts about having kids. I am very excited about the possibility of Jordy saving up enough money for her iPod Nano soon, but that’s another story. The boys are also getting right into the sweet spot for very fun toys. Lego is one thing that will figure importantly this Christmas, I think.

It also doesn’t hurt that today’s toys are seven kinds of awesome compared to the toys I had. Here’s a good example, made by Erector. It’s a spy robot you build yourself, in three possible configurations. It’s got a video camera and microphone so you can see what the thing is seeing, and it has speakers too, for freaking out everybody including your dog. That alone is great, but the best thing is the connectivity! Oh my god, it’s controllable over the internet with WiFi! It’s motion activated, so it can take a picture and/or send you an email when it detects motion. It plays MP3s.  It will return to it’s charger automatically and stay juiced up. It slices, dices, purees, you get the idea. The potential for mischief is limited only by your imagination.

My geek self is all riled up, I have no idea what I would use this for, but man it would be fun to play with. If I gave it to the boys, poor Jordy wouldn’t stand a chance. They could take the annoying little brother thing to a whole new level. If only the boys were a little older I could justify the rather hefty price tag ($300). As it stands today, this delicate little robot would be smashed by an errant Matchbox “General Lee” in no time. In answer to your next question, I’m still not sure if I would be buying it for the boys, or for me. A little of both, to be sure.

I saw this on Boing Boing Gadgets, and have been drooling ever since.

The Dukes

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Funny how you can never predict just what your kids will grab onto and make their own. A month ago I saw that Quinn was playing the (absolutely terrible) Dukes of Hazzard game we have for the PS2. I casually mentioned to him that I used to watch the show on TV when I was young. In hindsight this was the letting of the cat out of the bag, unbeknownst to me. Immediately Quinn asked if he could watch the show too, he didn’t know there was a show, is it like the game, do they drive a cool car, etc. I knew I had seen it on TV somewhere, so then I was pestered continually until I found it and started recording it for the lads.

The effects were immediate.

From the first viewing, it has become the number one request from the boys, bar none. Everything else on the tube pales in comparison. The mix of car chases, Roscoe P. Coltrane, bad dialogue, Daisy Duke, feeble plots, stunts and fist fights is irresistible to our boys. I had a parent’s momentary concern about the fights, and the sometimes wild firing of shots by the ever popular Roscoe, but I think in the end that maybe this is not the worst way to start introducing the boys to TV violence and help them to differentiate between the Dukes (jumping the General Lee over the creek) and reality (Dad changing lanes in the minivan on the Queensway). To be honest, even Nikki and I have fallen under it’s spell just walking past the TV, and end up sitting down next to the lads on the couch to watch an episode. That was a pretty darn good show, and it still is to some degree.

Of course the other side effect is that every game, joke and catch phrase we hear in the house now is Duke related. If I had a nickel for every time I heard a “yeeeehaaaaw!” or “Freeze!” followed by a patented Roscoe P. Coltrane cackle…..

I’m thinking that if this keeps up, I know just what Santa might bring for Christmas this year.

** Update.

The boys and I got together tonight and made a little treat for you. Enjoy.

Some sort of pun about pot should go here.

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 I have mentioned pot here on the blog before.  Don’t get me wrong, I never use the stuff.  I do think that the energy and money spent on trying to regulate and persecute it’s use is wasteful and needless in the extreme.  Personally I fail to see the difference between the use of recreational alcohol and pot, but that’s just me.  In my mind the government is throwing a very lucrative taxable revenue away by trying to keep people away from this stuff.  However, lots of folks apparently think differently because pot is still not legal, so there you go.

Anyway, here’s a couple of pot-related stories from Canoe.ca.

First is a bit about a prison in Tokyo that has a rampant weed problem in it’s exercise yard.  Literally, marijuana plants keep growing inside the prison yard and they can’t seem to get rid of them.

“….officials plucked out as many as 300 marijuana plants and treated the ground last year, but several more sprouted again this year.  Prisoners reported them to the guards.”

Now that’s funny.  The prisoners reported the plants riiight away, fer sure.

Next is the tale of an intrepid police officer who surely has succeeded in cracking one of the larger drug rings in the U.S.  Apparently the officer was driving by the home of a 71 year old woman, and spotted a 4 foot marijuana plant growing in her backyard.  The woman tried to do the bewildered old lady defence and said the plant was to keep animals away from her garden.  This might have worked but was probably ruined after the officer then discovered a bong, five more plants, seeds, etc inside her house.  Got to give her points for imagination, though.  Thank goodness he took that dangerous 71 year old lady off the streets, though.  I will sleep a lot safer knowing she isn’t baking brownies for her bridge club anymore.