Adam and Read Got Pregnant

Mittens

2012-08-23T11:59:00.000-04:00

When Mitt Romney began running for president, back when this blog had only 4 posts, I was 24, had not graduated from law school, was not married to and lived in a different state from Read. This November, when Mitt Romney finishes running for president, I will be 30, will have retired from being a lawyer, will have been married for 5 years, and will have a kid.

How is it possible that he's still so shitty at it? Serious question: is Mitt Romney the dumbest person in America who has $100,000,000?

Happy Independence Day

2012-07-03T13:34:00.000-04:00

Here are the two craziest things that I 100% totally believe:

(1) Octopuses are probably about as smart as humans.
(2) America is precariously close to devolving into a fascist police state and after such devolution we will act like assholes towards everyone else on Earth until we piss off the wrong sovereign and cause civilization to end in a haze of geopolitical dick swinging, World-War-I-style secret alliances, and neutron bombs.

Again, totally crazy. On the other hand, it's pretty easy to find at least some evidence for number 1. Also for number 2.

All Hail Proconsul Bloomberg

2012-06-01T11:00:00.000-04:00

Things like this, and the trans-fats ban, make me wonder what stereotypes my child's friends will have about my psychological home town. Though, I suppose there's no reason that believe that good ol' "it's full of assholes who refuse to treat me like the special snowflake around whom the world revolves that I know myself to be" will ever die.

This Is Probably Unfair To Bioshock

2012-05-29T11:30:00.000-04:00

It sure is disappointing that Bioshock Infinite got pushed to 2013. I really thought this might be the year that I finally got to play a game from the point of view of a ruggedly handsome brown-haired white dude. I hope I'll still get that opportunity. Wait, I will? I will? I will? I will? I will? I will? I will (you know we're getting an under-helmet reveal at some point, and you know he's going to have brown hair under that helmet)? Oh, good.

And This From A Guy Who Wrote A Song Called Wanksta

2012-05-25T09:30:00.000-04:00

My sense is that 50 Cent's worldview regarding the future of heterosexual men is about as well informed as his worldview regarding grapefruits:

Baby Names

2012-05-15T20:16:00.001-04:00

Being pregnant does realllly weird things to your brain. For example, last night I laughed so hard I cried and nearly fell off the couch because of a blog post about a worm-themed birthday party thrown by one of Jane's friends. This kind of behavior cannot be attributed solely to my deep love of Dr. Worm. Another thing gestation does to my brain is that it makes it able to focus on and scrutinize lists of baby names for hours on end. How do I know this? The SSA (oh WAIT, the super-top secret agency code-named Entitlement Program Shark Attack Destroy All Monsters) just released its stats on baby names from 2011.

Pregnancy has further reinforced my obsessive tendency to make lists. These lists are often digital, for added permanence and legitimacy. My excel spreadsheet of baby names (quit judging, you know you have one too) has three pairs of well-spaced columns. One each for "boys," "girls," and "ha ha" with an associated column for the current ranking, if available (I only looked to 1000. Remember, hours), for the name on the SSA 2011 list.

I wanted to share with you some of the highlights from my spreadsheet and the SSA rankings. To start off, I like strange and old fashioned names. The names I put forward Adam often shoots down with a, "Do you want the baby to hate us FOREVER?" I often suggest, 80% in earnest, that if we ever have a twin boy and girl I want to name them Maximus (#221) and Octavia (unranked). But some people are even meaner than I am. These horrible people do things like name their kid Boston (#557), Princeton (#978) and Kale (#589). Seriously, I'm not worried about offending you if you chose to do that. I'm telling you to your internet-face that you are a jackass.

My boys and girls lists are confidential, but I think the results of the "ha ha" column will be enlightening. The name Adam is regaining ground and is now the 81st most popular boys name. My/our Adam anticipates a further resurgence in honor of the dearly departed. Reid is #296 (increases to a relative rank of #192 when combined with Reed). Malcolm just breaks into the top 500 at #499; Theo holds it's own at #867. Axel is #132. This has nothing to do with ground-breaking musicians of the '90s; one of us actually had a family member named Axel.

Archer came in at #447. I wonder if people are hoping to have their kid turn out to be a cartoon spy or just thought that Katniss was too dumb to crib. I always find names with strict historical connotations very difficult to swallow. I can kind of get naming your kid Abel (#237), but Cain (#841)?? Listen, if I name my baby Hunter S. Thompson it is my own fault when he starts snorting coke out of salt shakers and tries to kill himself in a bathtub full of citrus fruit. Maybe if I name him Odin (#730) he will develop the power to shape-shift into an eight-legged horse named Sleipnir (unranked). Duncan came in at #799. That's right, Odin is now more popular than my brother.

But that is only the boys! And you know that we're all about in-utero gender neutrality for little Photon. According to The Bump, British names are now the big thing for girls. I don't really mind names like Camila (#48), Paisley (#195), and Arabella (#335). Anything is better than Londyn (#208), jackass. FYI, London is #84. Adam has ruled out all girl's names that end in an -ee noise. Gosh, I was so looking forward to naming my daughter Serenity (#66), Destiny (#91) or Trinity (#77). All of the female names from our family are unpopular, which is helpful because Adam hates the concept of naming the baby after someone in our family. Janet (#951), Lisa (#703), Jean (#948) and Christine (#731) are all less popular than Journey (#372), some even less loved than Journee (#718 and I just threw up in my mouth).

After careful review of the current data, I think have to revise my twins plan: Odin (#730) and either Isis (#636) or Athena (#313) sounds good. Sadly, there is no 2011 data about the more contextually appropriate choices of Frigg or Valkyrie. Wait, you mean I'm not having twins? Hmmm, then I guess I'll have to name my baby Peeta Trinket Haymitch Coin or Beautiful Unique Nevaeh. You like?

Popsicles!

2012-05-09T12:41:00.000-04:00

Even before I got knocked up I loved dessert. There is even an embarrassing apocryphal story about me hitting my head, bursting into tears, and Adam buying me a popsicle to make it better (note: I was not pregnant, nor I was I four years old at the time). Imagine how much I squeed with joy to find out that an artisanal popsicle shop opened up two blocks from my house. Yes, I said artisanal popsicle shop. We live in a neighborhood filled with prissy bitches like me, what do you want?

Storefront on 44th between Spruce and Locust

The proprietor (esse?) at work

It turns out that PopShop is awesome. I got the mint lime; I picked up the strawberry-rhubarb-lemonade for Adam. At $3 a popsicle, it is steep. But, I'm always willing to pay more to support local businesses. And I'm willing to pay like 7x normal price for anything featuring local produce (see prissy bitch, above). Also, the popsicles were AMAZINNNNGGGG. Even Adam noticed that they tasted good.

I guess the only real question is how much cash I will drop here in July and August when I'm 7 and 8 months prego. My plan is to use all the quarters in our change jar before Adam notices. I need to look on the frugal side, at least it's cheaper than Capo Giro.

Because We Solemnly Cluck About The Television Show Girls Lacking Diversity, Racism Is A Totally Fake Thing That No Longer Exists In America

2012-04-26T11:55:00.000-04:00

It took me a long time to really comprehend white privilege (or male privilege, or only-likes-having-sex-with-people-who-are-not-my-gender privilige. Assumed competence is my cross to bear.). I'm sure I'll never fully understand it (and I don't have to, that's part of the privilege!) but by now, at least, I have the mechanics down.

For example, when my crazy neighbor repeatedly calls the police about an alleged marijuana odor coming from my apartment, the police will show up 10 times in a month but never actually bother coming inside, or even asking to come inside.

Or a millionaire white guy from Boston will write this, about something a baseball manager could say that would make Boston sports fans particularly angry:

"He'd have to answer a question about Boston's busing riots in 1974 by saying something like, 'I know that stuff happened almost 40 years ago, but I don't care — I'll always believe Boston is a racist city and you'll never be able to tell me differently.' Every city has one sore spot. For Miami, it's Castro. For Boston, it's the racism thing."

So unfair to well-meaning white folks, that racism thing. And it all happened so long ago, we have a black president now, so obviously racism is a totally fake thing that . . . wait, what's that? Joel Ward, a black hockey player, just scored a goal to defeat the Boston Bruins? Well, I'm sure the Boston fans will doff their hats and compiment Ward on his sportsmanship. Obviously that racism thing is all behind us now, and, if you'll excuse me, I need to stick my fingers in my ears and yell LALALALALALALA!

By the way did you know that Joel Ward was almost cast as Rue in the Hunger Games movie?

She'll Think About AOL The Same Way That I Think About NYNEX

2012-04-17T11:50:00.000-04:00

I've long had a joke queued up in my head where I would get my kid an e-mail address and then have her * send out an e-mail to my parents and Read's parents saying something like:

"Hi Grandmas and Grandads,

This is Katamari-Dama. ** Now that I've turned five, Mommy and Daddy say I'm old enough for my own e-mail address and this is my first e-mail! How old were you when you got your first e-mail address?"

Turns out the joke is on me though, because, by then, sending an e-mail from a computer will be something that is only done by out-of-touch 35-year-olds. I guess I can still coach her on asking them when they got their first skype account or something. Assuming my parents can figure out how to use skype.

* I think "he or she" language is awkward, so I will be arbitrarily referring to Foety as either male or female on a post-by-post basis between now and her birth.
** I'll also be using a bunch of ridiculous names in order to make the name we actually pick seem more normal.

This Is The Article Three Clubhouse: NO GIRLZ ALLOWED!!!

2012-04-05T11:30:00.000-04:00

Sometimes when I tell people I'm going to leave my job to be a stay-at-home parent, they'll say something like, "boy it sure will be a change going from being a lawyer to taking care of a screaming kid in diapers."

To that I always say, "I deal with federal judges all the time, so I'm used to people throwing temper tantrums and stomping their feet for no real reason."

People generally assume I'm joking. Which I am, sort of.

Jake Gyllenhaal is Persian, Right?

2012-03-29T13:44:00.000-04:00

I don't think I'll ever stop being amused by this kind of rationalizing:

"I swear we seriously thought about having a female protagonist, but it would have compromised the historical realism of this game about preventing the apocalypse by using a machine to extract memories from the protagonist's dead ancestors, who are all part of a family line that began when a highly advanced species of god-like aliens genetically engineered humans and then bred with them."

Blogging for Two

2012-03-12T11:26:00.000-04:00

If you're not in my family, in Read's family, or one of a relatively small number of people who happened to be around me when I thought it would be funny to bring up important news in casual conversation, then we have some big news for you. Read is pregnant! With a human foetus! Presumptively human anyway, I'm still hoping for a Salarian. On or about September 26, Read will birth a girl/boy who, if long term historical trends hold, will be slightly better than us at everything and will have social views that future generations will find slightly less abhorrent than ours. But that's later. Today, little foety is 35% heartbeat, 65% vague shapes, and makes Read sweat a lot.

Baby FAQ:

Q: Do you know the sex of the baby?
A: No we don't know the sex yet, but yes we will soon.

Q: Cool, so you'll tell me the sex of the baby as soon as you find out, right?
A: No we won't tell you the sex. * You'll have plenty of time to gender-type the shit out of foety by disproportionately complimenting him for being brave and strong or calling her a prudish harlot who has sex too often and also not often enough after (s)he is born.

Q: This makes me uncomfortable. What color baby products are acceptable?
A: I don't know, yellow or green are good. Orange, red, purple, black, white. Definitely buy anything you see with a Spider-man logo on it.

Q: Why are you launching a War on Traditonal Baby-Color Values.
A: Seriously, it's not that big a deal. Buy blue or pink if you want, it's not going to do anything. I had Care Bears and My Little Ponies when I was a kid, and now I've grown up to exemplify traditional masculinity by becoming a stay-at-home dad.

Q: Having a child is a big life change, what made you decide to do it?
A: The main reason we're having a baby at this point in our lives is to ensure that our child will be in his or her physical prime when this happens. Will our child become a great leader, sheparding a small group of survivors as they remake society? Will Read become the new Mitochondrial Eve? Signs point to yes.

*Also, sex is different than gender. And fair warning, if you thought I was dubious of discriminatory social structures before I was entrusted with navigating a new person through them . . .

Concerned Reapers for Johnson

2012-02-22T11:45:00.000-05:00

If nothing else, we can be certain that Mass Effect 3 will outpoll Barry Goldwater in the upcoming election.

Three Differences Between My New Cell Phone And The Phone It Replaced And What They Would Mean If The Phone Were A Character In A Novel About The Existential Suffering Of Baby Boomers

2012-01-18T11:45:00.000-05:00

Difference #1:
When Read calls me, her facebook picture still shows up on the caller ID. But now it's a little bit blurry for some reason.

Symbolism:
My wife is no longer the woman I once knew. The changes are subtle but once I noticed them, they were all I could focus on. For too long I've been deluding myself, not interacting with her as she is, but interacting instead with a simulacrum: my own false image of the way she used to be. Maybe I'm the one changing, while everyone else stays the same.

Sample excerpt:
I looked in the mirror to make sure I could still recognize my own face. Creases. People called them "laugh lines" or "crows feet" to spare my feelings. I traced one with my finger but it ended abruptly, like an old rutted drive leading to an abandoned cabin. My cabin, my road, my rutted drive. My face was a road map for a town that no longer existed.

Difference #2:
The new phone has a larger memory card.

Symbolism:
He cannot escape his past. He went through life, meeting new people, seeing new places, but that only added new chapters to his story. The earliest chapters, the earliest moments, are still there. The smells. Daddy still liked to drink. The sounds. Daddy still walked out on him and on mommy. The pain. Daddy was still an empty chair at his high school graduation.

Sample excerpt:
I sat next to Barbara and began to drown in contentedness. Her Jack Russel Terrier, which she had named Jack in either total earnestness or total irony, ran in tight circles next to the sofa. I smiled. Barbara always teased me and said that I liked Jack more than I liked her. It happened in slow motion. Jack bumped the end table and the Tiffany lamp atop it lurched and swayed until its center of balance succumbed to gravity. Eight pounds of ceramics and glass and filaments accelerated towards Jack. I screamed, and Jack scurried away before the lamp came crashing down.
"Who's Duke?" Barbara asked.
"Duke?" I hadn't heard that name in a long time.
"That's what you screamed: 'Duke.'"
My ears were hot. "That's weird." I waited for Barbara to go back to reading her book, and then slowly turned my head towards our closet. The door was ajar, and a thin beam of light fell on an ancient baseball glove. It was covered in bite marks.

Difference # 3:
I always use vibrate instead of a ringer and the new phone vibrates less strongly and at a slightly lower frequency than the old one

Symbolism:
In the end, pragmatism won out over idealism. And is accomplishing your goals efficiently, providing light without providing excess heat, really so humble an ideal? I used to need attention. Now I take attention.

Sample excerpt:
The young man in the scarf was still loading his suitcase into an overhead bin as the train began to move. He took a small step backwards to avoid falling.
"I guess Newton is still good for something," I said to the pretty young lady to my right as the scarfed man sat down across the aisle. There was no response; she had a book open on her lap and was fiddling with an iPod. I abandoned all hope of engaging with my engrossed seatmate. As I looked up at the middle aged woman sitting across from me, I began to roll my eyes at the absurdity of it all, knowing she must have heard my aborted conversation. But instead of meeting her soul, I got a good look at her left ear--she was looking out the window. I followed her lead.
The world flew by in a wave from left to right. I heard a sneeze radiate from the direction of the scarf-clad momentum-conservationist.
"God bless you," said the pretty young lady to my right, seemingly unaware of his earlier foible.
"Thanks," he said, and, obviously flustered by the girl's beauty, which I had noticed first, he dropped his laptop.
"I guess Newton is still good for something," I said to the pretty young lady. She glanced back at me and then moved across the aisle to sit in the empty seat next to the scarven-necked gravitational young Turk.
Surely, this commotion had caught the attention of the woman across from me. I tensed my eyeballs. They were locked in their sockets, ready to roll with all the wistful dismissiveness I had earned. But she was still looking out the window. I joined her, and the world flew by from left to right.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

2012-01-04T10:21:00.001-05:00

I promised more games on this blog so here's a quick one. I've taken two cabs over the past week, and while neither driver affirmatively declared his allegiance to Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics, I have my suspicions. In any event, below there are three statements. Two of them were said to me by one of the aforementioned cabbies. One was not. Can you guess which statement WAS NOT said to me by a cabbie?

1. I don't like black people.
2. Well, at least you're not Irish.
3. Of course you can pay with a credit card. I am required by law to accept such payments and always do so willingly.

Answers in the comments!

Soon The Government Will be Forced To Buy Every American His Or Her Own Box Turtle

2011-12-29T13:43:00.002-05:00

Senator and person-who-probably-refers-to-Sofia-Vergara-as-"that-Spanish-lady" Tom Coburn (R-Texas' Hat) is shocked and appalled that the government granted $113,277 (a.k.a. 0.000003%, or three one-hundred-millionths, of the federal budget, a.k.a. 0.03 cents from each and every American) to a museum curation project*. I'm sure his outrage has nothing to do with the fact that this particular museum is devoted to subject matter to which old people say phooey. Indeed, Sen. Coburn's concen about profligate government spending is sincere and well-considered and not based on cynical political calculations or complete economic ignorance. And that's trouble for me, because $113,277 is uncomfortably close to the amount that the federal government spends on its give-Adam-a-yearly-salary-and-benefits-in-exchange-for-legal-services program.

Personally, I think my work is less important, and far more fungible, than preserving cultrural artifacts. So to avoid the chopping block I pored over the federal budget, item by item. To save my own skin, I needed to find an even more wasteful and less producitve program to cut. After a long search, I found something. Apparently, there is an obscure program called "congress," which I'm guessing has something to do with porn because I've heard the phrase "sexual congress" before, and I'm too lazy to do any further thinking on the matter.

This "congress" is a group of 535 government employees that collectively earns about $93 Million a year or $1,790,000 per week. That's just salary too; the federal government pays cogress all kinds retirement and health care benefits too. (LOL health care benefits from the federal government?! That'll never work.) Now, that's not necessarily a problem, especially if congress were performing some sort of vital function that was essential to our nation's operations. But, honestly, I can't really figure out congress' function. One prominent congressarian said that congress' "single most important goal" is to prevent the current president from being re-elected. Now I'm not sure what you guys think about Obama, but that seems like a weird thing for the government to spend 1,790,000 of your TAX PAYER DOLLARS on PER WEEK! (Especially with all these problems in the world today. Do they really need to spend time on this?) I did a little more digging, and it turns out that congress was originally intended to "pass laws." And, well, I guess they used to do that, but they don't really bother anymore.

But it gets even worse! "Congress" gets paid that salary whether they're actually working or just on vacation! (No wonder they don't bother passing any laws. This is more evidence that government handouts to lazy people discourage those people from working.) And "congress" is on vacation RIGHT NOW! A two week vaction that costs American tax payers almost $3.6 Million! And they took off the whole month of August, at a cost of almost $8 Million!

Truly, America cannot survive if forced to expend precious federal monies on this boondoggle. I promise you I will work ceaselessly to ensure that congress is abolished, or, at the very least, that they take less than $10 Million worth of vacations per year. I'm sure I can count on anti-spending stalwart Sen. Coburn to support me in this matter.

*Link courtesy of Alyssa Rosenberg, one of my two favorite bloggers on the planet.

E.P.S.A.D.A.M.

2011-12-28T13:15:00.000-05:00

Back in the carefree early days of this blog, we played games, and had contests (still accepting drink-name submissions!), and had a grand old time. Since then the blog has become a long string of cynical posts about books and institutional failures, broken only by Read's annual post about something she had recently eaten. Well forget that, it's time for MORE GAMES!!!!

Many of you know that I work a large government institution that is sometimes called a ponzi scheme by people who are too stupid to know what a ponzi scheme is. The thing about working at this place is that we use a lot of crazy acronyms and abbreviations and for things (That's government for you. Am I right, people?). In fact, we use so many acronyms, that I often feel like I work on a spaceship in some sort of weird science fiction story. Specifically the weird science fiction story Xenosaga, in which, five thousand years in the future, Space Jesus helps Space-Robot Mary Magdaline stop a wayward agent of Space God from destroying the Universe. No really, that's the plot!

Now for the game! Below, there are four pairs of terms and acronyms. Each pair includes one term from Xenosaga and one term used by my government institution, which, for google-veil purposes, will be called Entitlement Program Shark Attack Destroy All Monsters in honor of another great acronym and the greatest name of anything ever. It's up to you to guess which term belongs with which sprawling and convoluted entity! Answers at the bottom of the post.

1. KOS-MOS :: ARC-MOS
2. U-DO :: ODAR
3. P.R.T.F. :: U.R.T.V.
4. TESTAMENT :: NUMIDENT

Happy Guessing!

Solutions:
1. KOS-MOS, or Kosmos Obey Strategical Multiple Operation Systems (hooray recursive acronyms) is the aforementioned Space-Robot Mary Magdaline and is a main character in Xenosaga. She is a cutting edge weapons platform designed to fight ghosts, has blue hair, and talks exactly like January Jones. Meanwhile, ARC-MOS stands for Assistant Regional Commissioner for Management and Operations Support and is a relatively senior position within E.P.S.A.D.A.M. I don't really know what this person does, but a recent e-mail annoucing our newly appointed ARC-MOS suggests that a "strong working knowledge of FO, PSC and TSC Operations" and a "'can do' positive attitude" are the hallmarks of an effective candidate.

2. U-DO is from Xenosaga and, technically, is an abbreviation for Unus-Mundus Drive Operation system, but it's really a "collective unconscious with a single mind" that resides in the upper domain (get it, Upper DOmain?) and is the name of Xenosaga's Space God. It is also a "wave existence," which means, as any quantum physicist will tell you, it is also a particle existence. ODAR is the department of E.P.S.A.D.A.M. that manages judges.

3. P.R.T.F. stands for Psychiatric Review Technique Form, which is the a form that E.P.S.A.D.A.M. uses when evaluating the extent to which a person's mental illnesses and impairments affect their functioning. U.R.T.V. stands for U-do ReTroVirus (I don't know why they use periods either). These are robots who use their life force anti-waves to fight Space God (i.e., U-DO). There are 669 URTV units, all clones of their creator Dmitri Yuriev, who discovered U-DO, got confused about what it was, and then lied about it, and then tried to kill it (again, it being Space God) hastening the end of the Universe and the destruction of Planet Miltia (That's scientists for you. Am I right, people?).

4. Testaments are from Xenosaga and are the Space Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse...or something? There's definitely four of them, and they all have a tight relationship with Space God's fallen Space Angel. One of the Testaments built KOS-MOS, another is one of those God-killing Roboclones, one killed a main character's family, and then there's one who had an affair with a main character's nanny and maybe something more important than that, I forget. They all drive big Gundam style mechs that are named after the twelve tribes of Israel. NUMIDENT is our internal nomenclature for what everyone in the real world calls an Entitlement Program Shark Attack Destroy All Monsters Number. Why we cal it NUMIDENT, instead of the more straightforward Entitlement Program Shark Attack Destroy All Monsters Number, is unclear.

Hope you guessed well, and remember, this post was written in my personal capacity as a private citizen and none of the material contained within this post represents any official or unofficial position that E.P.S.A.D.A.M. has taken regarding Xenosaga or acronyms. Happy New Year!

Brisket aka Sunday Dinner vol.I 1

2011-11-10T14:17:00.000-05:00

Most years for my birthday I would request brisket. Maybe this is a strange birthday food for a kid to request, but my braised brisket and mashed potatoes is my all-time favorite comfort food. My mom's recipe (which I actually think it her aunt's) involves one onion, a bottle of Cross & Blackwell chili sauce and a slow cooker. For as long as I can remember, C&B has been unavailable to us (I check every time I go to Wegmans, no dice) so she used Heinz.

I am enamored with the idea of Sunday dinner. I'm not sure how this came to be- it wasn't really a tradition in our house growing up- but I'm hoping to integrate the big Sunday dinner into my life. My first attempt at this was to make a brisket. I had a recipe that I am adapting from the newly re-edited NY Times cookbook. By adapting, I mean I took a photo of the recipe with my smart phone at the campus book store and have some (aka half), but not all of the ingredients, leading to rampant substitution. Only after making the sauce did I realize that it is for 6 lbs of brisket whereas mine was only 2 lbs. I used about half of the sauce. Those of you smarter than me should simply half the recipe for non-holiday use. My version below.

Onions from Milk and Honey

Sauce:
1 C ketchup
1/2 C spicy brown mustard
1/4 C honey
1/4 C olive oil
1/4 C red-wine vinegar
1 tbs soy sauce (I had tamari)
1 tbs chili-garlic sauce (you know, the kind with the rooster)
1 Tbs ground black pepper
2 small white onions- 1/2 cut into wide rings, 1 1/2 rough chop
2 small gala apples, cored, peeled, rough chop
6 cloves garlic, halved

6 lb brisket
salt
pepper

Best wedding favor ever: honey from Charlottesville, VA

Pre-heat oven to 325 F. Reserve the half-onions worth of rings and place in bottom of baking dish (I used a lidded 4 qt dutch oven). Salt and pepper both sides of the brisket and let sit while making sauce.
For the sauce. Put the remaining ingredients into a food processor. Place the brisket on top of the onion bed, over with sauce. Bake for 3-ish hrs. Remove brisket (scrape off sauce) and slice against the grain. Thicken sauce on stove-top to desired consistency, season with salt and pepper. Dress the brisket with delicious sauce.

Delicious dinner

We ate it for dinner with mashed potatoes and roasted brussels sprouts. It was delicious, but things can always be better. My sauce, while tasty, was strange. It was a little apple-saucy (that's what you get when you puree whole apples). Next time I will use apple cider. Or maybe use Coke like the original recipe said but I refused to do (I'm sure you know my opinion about soda).

Shout out to Ali, another master brisket maker for passing on this bit of additional info: Michael Solomonov's coffee-braised brisket recipe. She mentioned using pomegranate juice in lieu of veal stock...

We Are...

2011-11-09T13:16:00.002-05:00

*phone rings*

Hello, Marvel Comics Publishing Division, how can I help you?...Oh Hi Stan!...No we'd love to hear your story idea, I always said you had more great comic books left in you!...oh, new group of villains, exciting...uh huh...uh huh...So sort of like Hellfire Club but at a University? Maybe we could have Curt Conners...oh, ok...oh, a big reveal, you start off thinking the villains are heroes, I like it!...uh huh...uh huh...so he's in the locker room...What's in the locker room? Does he kill someone?...HE WHAT?!?!...Stan, I'm not sure anyone wants to read that...ok...ok...oh, so someone sees what happened, that guy ends up being the hero, the main protagonist, right?...HE JOINS THE VILLAINS?!?!...Wait so who is the hero?...Everyone has been in on it the whole time?!?! EVERYONE?!?!...FOR FIFTEEN YEARS?!?! Stan, listen, I don't know what to say. I just think...ok, ok, tell me the last twist...THAT'S WHAT HE USES THE CHARITY FOR?!?!...Sorry Stan, we're going to have to pass. Galactus, Red Skull, Apocalypse, that's one thing. But these guys are just too evil. Even for comic books. See you later Stan.

*click*

The Bork Is A Lie

2011-11-03T11:55:00.001-04:00

It sure is weird how every group of top-secret-super-double-important-mega-bellweather voters that the media touts, be they "NASCAR dads," "security moms," or the newly minted "Wal*Mart moms" (not to be confused with "get-paid-20%-less-by-Wal*Mart-than-dads-do moms") ends up being some variety of conservative voter who has vague, but deeply held concerns about Democratic Candidate X, but gosh maybe would vote for him if only the Democrats didn't hate America so much. Seems like an odd strategy for our unabashedly liberal media to employ. Must be some kind of dirty commie librul trick like passing the 19th amendment, or accurately describing the published views of a federal judge.

I Can't Wait For the GOP To Accidentally Nominate Herman Cain

2011-10-26T12:05:00.002-04:00

Because we have a black president, racism is a totally fake thing that no longer exists in America. Just ask Representative Lamar Smith (R-the state that begged and pleaded to join the United States because it was unable to protect itself). But anyway, these are false and inflammatory charges that were brought by the DOJ and its reverse-racist leader, Eric Holder. Also, who cares both sides do redistricting shenanigans so this is actually not a big deal. In any event, to the extent this is a problem, it can be solved by cutting taxes and eliminating teachers' unions.

What A Dick

2011-10-13T19:40:00.001-04:00

Don Draper is a brooding cipher and a creative genius. He has an unparallelled mind for advertising and can sell any product. He's a man's man who smokes and drinks and womanizes and seethes at the world. His dark past infects every decision he makes and every relationship he has. He can bring hardened Kodak executives and his own copywriters to tears by talking about a slide projector. He is responsible for sophisticated campaigns for any number of products, none more successful than the one for Don Draper himself. That's why it makes perfect sense that, according to Mad Men's fiction, Don Draper is directly responsible for this:

Yeah, I know. I'm also the guy who constantly thinks about how Wolverine is precisely as fast and agile when his entire skeleton is encased in metal as he is when it is not.

When You're Able To Make James Inhofe "The Smart One"...

2011-10-12T09:30:00.000-04:00

For various intricate and confidential work-related reasons, my chances of speaking to Senator/Ricky Ricardo fan club president Tom Coburn have increased one-thousand fold. If that happens, I promise to mention box turtles, no matter the consequences. Luckily, on the advice of learned counsel (and possible holder of ambiguous views on the ethics of double-rape) John Grisham, I declared this blog attorney work product, so this entry will not be admissible in my eventual wrongful termination suit.

The Fire-Bombing Of Dresden By Those Dastardly Capulets

2011-10-07T10:30:00.000-04:00

Missed Connections:

You: The recent college graduate who was on the 9/30/2011, 6:50 pm flight from Philadelphia to Providence and who hit on his engaged seat mate by telling her a story about the Holocaust.

Me: Guy seated a row in front of you who (1) wonders how hard you two hooked up after I heard you exchange facebook information at the end of the flight and heard your engaged seat mate instruct that if other facebook users shared her name, she would be identifiable as "the hot blonde one" and who (2) wonders what role, if any, the Holocaust plays in your physical love-making techniques.

LOL

2011-09-29T00:30:00.000-04:00

Fifteen years from now, when Carl Crawford hits his his 763rd home run, (go to 2:02) you'll all be sorry. Seriously though, this month was the Red Sox pitchers' fault, and ESPN.com only hires [snicker] experts who [chuckle] really understand baseball. That's why [guffaw] it would be impossible for all 45 of them to pick [tee hee] the Red Sox as AL East [giggle] champions. I mean everyone knew that team had no chance to even make [wakka wakka] the playoffs. Well, almost everybody.