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The products of the day

So, my friend Jen and I, in our ultimate good judgment decided to make Petit Fours.  These are really cute little cakes that are individual sized and very fancy, usually layered and filled with some type of jam or frosting and fondanted to make look like little presents or what have you.   So, of course we decided that, even though we don’t often succeed in our baking, we could do this.  No sweat, right?

Like I said, we have great judgment of our skills in the kitchen (insert unjustified overconfidence).  Really what we want is to make things that look really pretty and taste really good.  See, that shouldn’t be so hard, right?  Um…well I guess if we had any idea of what we were doing we would do better but…usually we get good taste OR pretty but never both.  And sometimes we get neither.

A little background since this is the first post that I am writing on this topic even though Jen and I have been baking for a few months.  We started doing this because we were both interested in learning how to bake/cook things we don’t normally cook but couldn’t find any classes around here to attend.  So we figured, it can’t be that hard, right? We will just teach ourselves.  Oh, and watch Alton Brown for the occasional hint or tip.  Pretty much the blind leading the blind.

Anyway, like I was saying, we decided to make petit fours. Click here if you would like to see how they should actually look when done correctly. These are not our petit fours. These are our petit fours.

Our petit fours...

And you will have to forgive me because I just decided to start writing about this so I didn’t take pictures throughout the whole process which would have been much more amusing for you for sure.  I mean, we had stuff everywhere.  I mean, I read all of the reviews of petit four recipes and read how much trouble and effort was other bakers put into theirs, the good and bad results, all the tips and hints and warnings not to acutally do this.  And what did we decide to do?  We did it anyway and still thought we would end up with something beautiful and tasty.  Did we take other bakers (who probably have more time and experience than us) advice? No.

Anyway, I started out by making marshmallow fondant (all the advice I read about fondant out of the box says it tastes like sugary cardboard) on Thursday morning before I left for work. I couldn’t have taken pictures if I wanted to, I ended up with hands that the staypuff marshmallow man would have pined over.  It was really sticky and gooey and awesome.  Anyway, the fondant turned out okay.  Jen was in charge of making the cake ahead of time and we froze it to get it to not be so moist.  Then we cut it, things were going well.  It was once we tried to frost it to put on the fondant that we started to realize that this might not be such a good idea.

It looks like a candy cube of some type

We got about 6 done in half and hour and I decided that we should sample the wares, especially since they were not looking the beautiful part, hopefully they would taste the delicious part.  The taste wasn’t bad, it was just super duper sweet.  Like instant sugar headache. We kind of gave up at this point, refusing to decorate the super sweet sugar clumps that we had created.  My suggestion if you want to make petit fours is: go to a bakery and get professional ones.  They look and taste much better.

So, what do we do?  Emergency back up plan.  We made cake pops.  These turned out really good, they weren’t too sweet and it was a good way to use up the extra cake.

Well, they aren't super cute but...

Cake pops are pretty simple, you take leftover cake, add some melted butter and cream cheese and milk (we used soy milk) and mix it all together until it will stay in a ball.  Make little balls and put them in the freezer to solidify them, then dip them in melted chocolate (or in our case white chocolate).  The recipe calls for sucker sticks but we modified it to use pretzel sticks (mostly because we couldn’t find any sucker sticks at the last minute and we were struck by ingenuity or despiration or both).  So, it all worked out really well but as usual we did not succeed in our plans to rule the baking world.  Oh well, there is always next time.

It's the pretzels that make them gourmet

Click here to view the embedded video.

California was shocking because recently the state supreme court okayed gay marriage but now that decision is in question. It wasn’t as if the pro-equality side didn’t have enough money to run a campaign. They raised almost twice as much as their opposition. Polling suggested that people were favoring the pro-equality side but when the time came to vote it was apparent that many people were not honest with how they really felt about the issue.

One of the biggest factors in the gay marriage ban passing were African American voters who voted for the amendment 69% to 31%. African American voters turned out in record numbers for the election which ended up hurting the equality cause. Polling showed black voters were more likely to attend church and be less comfortable with equality for gay people. It is interesting that black people who have dealt with so much discrimination and prejudice are still prejudiced against gay people. I don’t know if it has more to do with being more involved with the church are the un-acceptance of gays in the black community.

One of the stories that was influencial a Mormon family of 5 who gave $50,000 of their savings to the support of the issue. When asked about their decision the wife said, “Was it an easy decision? No. But it was a clear decision, one that had so much potential to benefit our children and their children.” It’s amazing how afraid people are still of gays. I’m not sure exactly what would happen to her or anyone else children for that matter but apparently it would be so catastrophic the family felt like throwing their savings at the problem in hope to stop it. I would say how stupid these people are but they already wasted $50,000 dollars on something that does not affect them either way. The most notable thing is the reason they give being to protect their children. George Orwell wrote a lot on this topic of people using language and words to hide their real significance and to slander others while trying to seem that they have other more noble intentions. When the family says it is trying to benefit their children and other what they are really saying is that they don’t like gay people are afraid of them and want them to go away and not be around them. Gay people are apparently dangerous and want to harm their children, by promoting pedophelia or making them gay themselves. Of course no one will come out and say that so they use other language.

Pro-equality supporters did not do a good job of  campaigning against the issue. They thought that they were right and that would be sufficient to defeat the amendment. If anything has been learned in the last eight years it is that just because something is the right thing to do does not mean that it will automatically be supported. Politics has become much more sophisticated with computerization and if you want your issue to win you need to play the game correctly. The initial polling they did that showed that they had a majority of the public’s support was obviously not representative of voters on election day. Clearly black voters were not adequately accounted for and their views. The campaign should have made a concerted effort to target them and pursuade of their cause. If you don’t understand the rules of the game of politics expect to lose. One of the reasons Obama one was the Democratic party was organized this time and made sure that their campaign was well run and left nothing to chance. Others need to follow their example and not rely on past successes.

There is a lot of talk lately in this election about Barack Obama having “socialist views” and being “a socialist.” For some – especially those who grew up during the Cold War – this evokes an image of radical Socialism as practiced in Soviet Russia and Mao’s China. Or is that Communism? What is the difference anyway?

The idea of Socialism has been around for a long time – longer than German philosopher Karl Marx (who wrote The Communist Manifesto). Socialism is a set of ideals and not a type of government. Examples of types of government are Representative Democracy & Constitutional Republic (United States), Parliamentary Democracy & Constitutional Monarchy (United Kingdom, Canada), Direct Democracy & Parliamentary Republic (Switzerland) and Socialist Republic (Cuba) … among many others.

Having “socialism” written down as a set of ideals came out of Europe where people had been struggling with class for centuries. Industrial revolutions made the worker more valuable but also the CEOs of the time much richer. Common people wanted to be recognized as a more important part of society and given more rights and better compensation for their work.

This is where unions started to become more popular. The workers organized themselves and revolted against the rich business owners. This happened all over the world – Germany, England, Australia and the US. How are unions socialist? It is workers asking rich business owners to “share the wealth” – pay us more as you make more – and fighting back in droves. The simple showing of solidarity – if we all don’t work then you will not be able to make money off us – is what makes a union powerful.

As with any large-scale movement, things spiraled out of control in some areas where those with the most fervor from the victories of The Worker began to snowball into an “I know what’s right” mentality (see: Catholicism) . In places like Russia and Germany, where the workers had been most repressed and the people had suffered the most, socialism turned into Socialism and Communism, with a hint of Anarchy. Russia’s Communism (where the government flat out controls everything and no one is rich…and in their case, everyone is poor) did spread but no Communist system in the world has ever been considered “pure communism” as pretty much everyone got it wrong. Communism, as the name suggests, is actually supposed to be like an ideal hippie commune where everyone works together, all of the food and goods are produced within the commune, and everyone is treated equal. Things didn’t quite pan out that way for the Communists, mainly due to human greed and ego of the people who lead the revolutions in the first place.

In other Westernized countries, socialism did just fine. Some people read Marx’s work and interpreted it differently. These socialists were from democratic countries (countries where the people vote) and their form of Socialism was called socialist democracy. They believed that socialist-type stuff could come about through EVOLUTION rather than REVOLUTION – meaning that the social services that would be provided by the government would be a reaction to the people’s needs and not a top-down decision based purely on the hatred of capitalism.

Also note that in the phrase “socialist democracy” it is democracy with a small “d” and is intended to convey the word in a sense of voting (democracy) and not the “left-leaning” American political party the Democrats.

Socialism in the form of socialist democracy has been alive and well in the Western world since World War I. Canada, The United Kingdom, Switzerland, France and Brazil hold social democracy ideals. The government helps out the people, people are still free, capitalism is totally alive and well, no one class drowns under taxes and the people are happy. The people vote for these socialist ideals to be put in to place – they are not forced upon them.

Is there socialism in America? You bet! Medicare/Medicade, welfare, unions, unemployment, social security and even the US Post Office are social services (the USPS, while now its own thing, is still backed by the government). So are libraries, public schools, fire and police services and city snow plows.

What about this whole government bailout thing? Is that socialism? Well first remember that it was a democratic bailout – you voted for your representatives and they in turn voted for the terms of the bailout. It was NOT the head of the government making a sweeping decision on what to do (which is what the Communist side of Socialism would have done). It remains to be seen whether this bailout will benefit the people (as socialists are wont to do) or not. The hope is that it WILL benefit us and, thus, it was a socialist democracy sort of decision.

So, are we Socialist or not? Well, remember that Socialism is not a type of government – we still are and will always be a representative democracy with a very strong Constitution. There will always be a system of “checks and balances” where no one individual can gain complete control (although honestly, some of those checks and balances were cast aside during Bush’s presidency). Social democrats of today are focusing more on the environment, feminism, fair trade, human rights and secularism. These ideals do fall more in line with the Democrat (big D) way of thinking. The “left-wing” if you will.

In order for social democracy to take a stronger hold on America, it will mean an increase in taxes. But, the wealth of the American people is extremely lopsided already. The vast majority of the people pay lots of tax and get little in return. This is the middle class and the “working poor.” They do not qualify for social services which are reserved for the completely destitute and they do not have the extra money to “get ahead.” So, in America, a socialist democrat has the “luxury” of slightly changing the tax laws in a way that SLIGHTLY raises the taxes on a very small but very wealthy segment of the population. This shift would not only ease the tax burden on the middle class and working poor but also afford the government the ability to extend social services such as universal health care to ALL Americans thus FURTHER easing the burden on the middle class.

This is, indeed, “spreading the wealth.” But it’s not as scary as it sounds. It means that if I make $250,000 and my tax goes up 1%, that is an extra $2500 for the government. If you make $80,000 and your tax goes DOWN 1%, that is $800 less for the government. At this point, the government is $1700 ahead, you have $800 more to spend in the economy and I have $2500 less to let sit in my bank and collect interest. But that’s ok for me because I still have $247,500 in the bank and will make that 1% back in interest in less than 30 days. The government can take that extra $1700 now and give you universal health care, which is going to save you a lot of money over the years. You’ll probably take that money and blow it on some useless goods or invest it in the stock market. But that’s good for me because as a rich person I benefit from a healthy stock market and a healthy US economy.

It’s all pennies and nickles and dimes. Is it “taking from the rich and giving to the poor”? In a sense, yes. But “rich people” in America have proven they can’t be trusted to manage their money – and our money – in a way that is beneficial to America. They take the money and build factories in China. They take the money and buy shoddy loans. They take the money – which used to be your money – and spend it on hookers and blow. They use their power and money to screw each other, they screw shareholders, they screw the government (tax evasion, inflated government contracts, etc) and they screw the American economy.

All that socialist democrats want is to take a tiny bit of that wasted money and pump it back into the American economy. This will come in the form of raising taxes for the “filthy rich” and closing tax loopholes that have helped unscrupulous business executives get further ahead than planned. Instead of running the government by lending an ear (and an arm and a leg) to the rich, the socialist democrat wants to run the government in a way the benefits ALL Americans – even the rich.

So, don’t be afraid of “socialism.” Western social democracy is not the same as Communism. Think of social democracy as Protestantism: Christianity became Catholicism which turned Christianity on its ear, and the Protestants decided to break off and do their own thing. Socialism became Communism which turned Socialism on its ear, and the socialist democrats decided to break off and do THEIR own thing. Just as you can’t call every Christian a Catholic, you can’t call every Socialist a Communist.

Is Barack Obama a Socialist? Well he’s not a Marxist or a Communist. Technically he’s a Democrat. Does he have Socialist views? Probably. And good for him. Because this “Free Market Capitalist” crap isn’t really working out for us.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Apparently John McCain has switched sides and now is against his supporters. Actually he makes a huge gaffe and the recovery he attempts afterwards is painful to watch. Listen to how silent the crowd goes after he says he agrees with Obama and his supporters. It is made all the more worse by how confident McCain looks before he screws up the line.

Here is the clip of Murtha that McCain was attempting to respond to.

The first thing you will notice is that its freakin’ dark in the parking lot. There’s like one light and that’s it. If you follow the crowds of people up the hill eventually you’ll arrive at the ticket booth. The have pizza, candy and hot apple cider in case your also hungry. The ticket says that there are five haunted houses for you to go to. Trying to visit them in order is problematic though.

We first went to the two up a dark hill which turned out to be 4 and 5. They really spared no expense on the “houses” plywood boards with a tarp over top. Going through is standard haunted house fair. walk around a corner someone jumps out at you, get scared and repeat. The end of the second house had another one of those birthing canals that was at Pandora’s Box so those must be a popular addition this year.

Next we waited in line for the haunted hay ride, which would have been good except it was frickin’ cold as hell on Saturday so we were freezing standing in line. The hayride itself wasn’t too bad but it took FOREVER. Guys ran at the trailer with chainsaws and scared the girls, after the third time it got a little predictable. At one point we witnessed an execution by electric chair, in which the guy was electrocuted and then turned into a monkey corpse. At the very end we based by an outhouse with a dummy that sprayed water on one side of the trailer.

Next up was the haunted trail through the woods. After waiting to get there it too about four minutes to walk through the whole thing. Even the actor’s wanted to leave one girl we talked to asked how many people were still coming and said she was freezing.

Lastly we went to the first house. This one had a clown theme I guess because several of the actors were wearing clown make-up. This one also featured a tunnel you had to crawl through which was tons of fun for a tall person.

Overall Scare Creek was an average haunted house if not underwhelming. It is also directly in the middle of nowhere so it looses some points for taking forever to get to.

Atmosphere:

Scariness:

Overall Score:

Stalker Haunted Corn Maze

We went to the Stalker Corn Maze two years ago as well so I will spend some time talking about the improvements they have done since then as well as an overall review.

First, when you get there you wait in line to purchase a ticket to enter the house.  You then wait in line to get on a hayride which takes you to another queue where you wait in line to enter the house.  That would be my first negative, so many lines to wait in for just one house.  The wait to get inside the corn maze is long but to my suprise it’s because they wait long enough so that you are not being herded through the house.  We really didn’t run into many people and even when we did we would lose them again shortly so it was nice, we were able to feel much more alone than you do in most houses.

Once you are inside the maze (mind you, it’s not acutally a maze at all although it really is inside a huge corn field.  If you want a corn maze check out Derthicks which is located in Manuta and is not haunted but totally worth the money.) you find the path is a little hard to walk on but the ambiance is nice.  Lucky for us it started getting pretty foggy while we were waiting in line and so it was nicely creepy while walking on an uneven path through corn rows.  There were scenes but most of them were too foggy to see (with strobe lights, fog machines and the natural fog) what was going on for the most part.

It seemed that there weren’t very many actors in this attraction, maybe they were hoping that the ambiance would creep you out sufficiently.  The actors they did have just jumped out and screamed in your general direction, sometimes better than I’ve heard from the little scardy cat teenage girls that run past you in these events.  There were a lot more actors the last time we were here, there were long parts where we were the only people on the path. The costumes were all almost from horror movies.  The basic theme was to jump out and scream as you would pass by.  I guess it’s tried and true but in my book it’s not so scary.

They added some parts where you have difficulty walking and where you have to crawl through one part, those were nice additions (unless you ask the tall guys with us who had to crawl on the ground).

My highlights this year were the double bus experience and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre scene.  I won’t ruin them for you in case you go but I would like you to know that if I were in Texas Chainsaw Massacre I would be dead.

My scores for Stalker Corn Maze:

Atmosphere:

Scariness:

Overall Score for Stalker Corn Maze:

Second opinion: The Shig

Coming soon!

Alouette’s Review:

House 1: House of the Dead

Rating for House of the Dead:

The following paragraph contains descriptions which may be seen as spoilers!

House of the Dead was pretty good.  This house was too short, though.  This house use a lot of image projecting equipment to enhance long lonely hallways (in which they have few or no actors, possibly to cut costs or something?).  The effect is cool but not scary, though it does add a nice touch to the atmosphere of the place.  The definite highlight of this house is what I referred to as “the birthing canal” for lack of a better term.  Basically it’s a black tunnel that is made in a similar manner to the Halloween inflatables in peoples yards. It’s all black and completely engulfs you, it makes you feel like you are stuck in it and you have no idea how long the tunnel is.  Also, it feels like there are people pushing on both sides of it (not sure if there are people or if it’s just from your party going through which seems more likely), pushing you around from side to side.  It is very intense, I really didn’t expect something like that at all.  My second most memorable moment was the Voodoo room where vines above you actually rain down on you as you walk through.  It also has a giant animatronic monkey skeleton which is pretty cool.

House 2: Reapers Castle

Rating for Reaper’s Castle:

The following paragraph contains descriptions which may be seen as spoilers!

I really wish this one’s name wasn’t so cheesy because it’s the better of the two houses.  This house is twice as long as the first house. There was a lot of use of the projection in this house as well, sometime in this house there were really long sections of hall with no actors at all.  My problem with this (because normally this would be building up anticipation) is that they were trying to make these hallways completely dark, at least I think they were, but instead since the ceiling wasn’t covered up (it’s in a large factory) it was just kind of dim hallways.  I would suggest that they cover the ceiling up with a dark cloth and the long hallways with nothing or just projected ghouls and ghosts would be much more creepy.

Anyway, the highlights since I told you this one was better.  First of all, we start out with a small show of a giant flying animatronic Grim Reaper.  It was pretty cool.  He flies around the room and talks to the guests.  In this house we also have another birthing canal, just an FYI.  The ambiance in this one is much more intense, there is a whole section where you feel like you are going through the hospital from Silent Hill with crazy Silent Hill Nurses and scuttling things on the floor in wide hospital corridors.  The wide hospital corridors force you into a creepy huge bathroom with the stall style sinks and crazy dead people telling us to stay and play.

Overall Score from Alouette:

Just a quick mention that these houses were really great, they were fun and had nice atmosphere.  I was a little disappointed with the price of the houses, $15 for each.  It’s $25 if you want to go to both which isn’t bad but if you just went to one it would be a bit of a rip off.  If you do only go to one, Reaper’s Castle is the one with more bang for your buck.

Overall Atsmophere:

Overall Scary Factor:

Overall score for Pandora’s Box:

Second Opinion, The Vic’s Scores:

Defining moment: The birthing canal, the effects in general.  Especially the amazing cover band in the parking lot.

House of the Dead:

Reapers Castle:

Pandora’s Box overall:

How sad is that?  In an age where we like to think of Americans as progressive thinkers who have learned a hard lesson after four additionally painful years (at least most Americans according to the latest poll I heard which put Bush at a 29% approval rating) people are making a very very very important decision based on the fact that McCain would be better because he is white and old.  Or maybe it’s just because he’s white.

I know from my previous posts it might become a little obvious about who I am planning on voting for, please put that aside.  I don’t care if you want to vote for McCain as long as it’s because he is standing for the issues you think are important to you.  If you are just afraid of black people or feel that [insert problem here] is all the fault of the [insert race/racist comment here] and that is why you are voting for McCain then you are an idiot and should be sterilized and not allowed to breed.

Anyway, I did like this line from the article: There are a lot fewer bigots than there were 50 years ago, but that doesn’t mean there’s only a few bigots. I dig that line.

And don’t even get me started on how OLD McCain is.  And how Sarah Palin is NOT prepared to be president of the country.  If she were to become president (she has told news casters that she isn’t sure what a VP does, god help us all if she has to be president) I believe that she is not prepared to do a good job and ruin it for years to come for the rest of us hard working women.  Seriously, if she becomes president and screws the pooch you can bet your bottom dollar that no one will elect a woman to office for years to come.  The idea will be this: “Obviously women can’t be president, don’t you remember Sarah Palin?”

Anyway, this article is about racism, not Sarah Palin.  My aunt was driving in her neighborhood the other day and found a hand made wooden sign in the frond yard of some house.  I don’t have the picture yet but when I do get it I’ll post it on here, I promise.  Painted in big letters it said “Vote Right, Vote White“.  This was in a more affluent part of the Youngstown Ohio area, Cortland Ohio.

And I pretty much am speechless to that.  What can you even say to someone who puts that in their yard, displayed proudly like their kid is the star quarterback or Lordy Lordy Aunt May’s 40 signs?  The answer to that is nothing.