Self-respect

If you have any of it at all, you will drop whatever it is you are pretending to be doing and make this, like, immediately:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Broiled-Lemon-Thyme-Pollock-350901

Pollock is the same as cod, so don't give me grief about that.

We had this on Saturday with some amazing veggies (new potatoes [sorta smashed], red peppers, garlic, green onions, yellow onions all drizzled with olive oil, some salt and pepper and loose herbs taht were just sitting there and baked at 375 till browned, then served with some capers and some sherry vinegar shaken on for added piquancy, doncha know) and it may be the easiest, yet best "good restaurant" quality dish I now have in my repertoire (he wrote, fully aware of braggadocious pretense inherent in the statement).

Not much to add, except one of the cats (the, ahem, smart one) said she wanted to start a fish-themed all-cat GBV tribute and her name therein would be Cod Pollock. Bee Troutsand, etc...

Rooster watch!

The office rooster (I've taken to calling him Royal, because he looks like Gene Hackman, a bit) is still here! My boss came with his cage this weekend to try to capture him and take him home to his (the boss's) farm. Royal wisely amscrayed all up out the parking lot before that. But, no - he has not been torn apart by foxes or anything.

Last week, we had a company-wide conference call with the bigwigs saying how we did great last year, up 11 per cent - until it all flatlined like everyone else. My idea, then, is we get some hens and start selling eggs! Or sending eggs to our lunch cafe place.

Desperate times, etc!

Sometimes a crappy forwarded email pays deep dividends

Ha! Get this (from a crappy forwarded email chain, but SO, SO worth it):

Driving an unfamiliar/new/rented/borrowed/stolen/traded-to-you-for-some-drugz car? Forget which side the gas tank is on? Have pulled in, turned off car, gone inside to pay (no, I will not pay for gas "at the pump," and don't you dare tell me it's easier) then come out to realize you are on the wrong side, then have to either turn around and back in or go tell the Dumb Kid working inside (over the blare of local monopolized rock radio blasting "Can't Get Enough of Your Love," if that's what it called? Bad Company...) that you need to move to a different pump (and, even then it's still better than the vile "paying at the pump" you so callowly espouse)...

Well, get this then: that little icon of a pump on any gas gauge made post-19whatever? It TELLS you what side to park on (and in my excitement over this, I WILL leave the preposition):

!!!!!!

A bit extreme

Had to share this: per March issue of GQ, where is the best place to keep cologne?

Armoire? Medicine cabinet?

Nope. Your fridge.

Who do they think would really do this? Amazing!

"Friday Night"

Have yet to thoroughly digest/internalize the Hot Leg album, though I like it. It's not been a Full Album Day for acouple of weeks (of which, yes, more later).

It has served to prod me, though, into remembering/restating that "Friday Night," from Permission to Land is the Best Song of the Last Five Hundred Years:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClVZfJJzy78

Uncle Al is dead!

If you live outside of Southwest Ohio, you're lucky. Wait! Yes, that, you are lucky but also you have no idea who Cincinnati children's TV legend Uncle Al was, or that he's gone. But he is.

I dunno, I don't actually remember overmuch about his show, other than my neighbor had a better antenna on his house so could get Cincinnati TV in better (resentment!) and I very vaguely remember some weird recurrent segment they would do where he went to some cave? Like, walking along a precipice over a chasm of sorts to go to some other mystical tv land, all done in super-crappy early 70s cutaway/bluescreen (like the Eskimo show Butch is watching as a kid in Pulp Fiction)? Or maybe I dreamt this/have it blended in with Land of the Lost? It does seem a bit far out for the Land of Charles Keating and Joe Morgan...

I love that they broke in with a special report, though:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wND5BKL2LQ8

Also, a good excuse to post this, which rules utterly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV6hYI-Se-A

St Duffy

Very excited this morning to realize this blog has been going long enough that I cannot remember whether I have mentioned the mighty Stephen Duffy...I apologize now for both if I will now cover old ground or, unthinkably, I have indeed neglected mentioning him until now. Still, it was a shock on Friday afternoon late, when I was making a playlist [more on these later today, hopefully] for the trusty iPod knockoff (aka Thingy 2, a 30-gig Creative Labs Zen [recommended!], Thingy 1 having been my 2004-era Zen, which, now by comparison, was crude and looked like something from the Soviet space program) that I realized I did NOT have "Bank Holiday Monday" by his most-of-the-time band The Lilac Time in my Thingy2 library or even on my external hard drive. WTF?

So, I remedied this this morning, and, scouring youtube for "Bank Holiday Monday" (fruitlessly, it turned out, but for a Stereophonics track of same name, possibly a cover, but I don't care about Stereophonics enough to even check - zing!), I did find a video for his 1993-era single "Natalie" which is just lovely as well and full of lotza luvverly ladies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ar9LCIkqOI

Anyway: he was Duran singer pre-Simon, had a big British hit in the 80s with a very twee number called "Kiss Me", out-Brit popped most Britpop era kids but lost out by being old, wrote a bunch of songs for Robbie Williams...should be bigger than, I dunno, Jason Mraz or something.