Atomic Nerds

Oh, this thing is still on? Hey, sorry about that*. So 2012 pretty well sucked crusty green donkey whangers, we’re all on the same page there, right? Well, a whopping two weeks in, ’13 is already a mixed bag but trending positively. LabRat has unfortunately spent the majority of the year thus far sick as a dog, hence a good chunk of the lack of content, but it has now been a whole couple hours since she attempted to hack a chunk of lung across the room, so we’ll take what we can get.

I know there have been some** requests for dog pictures as easy filler content. Good news! I have dog pictures! And you can just wait patiently for them because today’s story is about a pie.

See, during the Rama-mas-zwa-inox-ukah-years down time, longtime friend and part time dogsitter Indy was spending a good chunk of her grad student winter break here at Nerd Ranch. This meant that I had Help available in the kitchen. I know it’s odd, but LabRat and I mostly just get in each other’s way, despite many years of marriage, but Indy and I dance like Fred and Ginger*** in the kitchen for reasons unknown. So with little to do and help available, a recipe was floated before me leading to the phrase “Why not? It’s not like there’s anything else going on.”

If you ever hear me say that about a recipe again, just shoot a tranq dart in my neck right then and there and be done with it, mkay?

Now the actual recipe comes from the ambitious but excellent A Girl And Her Pig. The fact that the cover of the book pisses so many crybabies off is reason enough to buy it, but despite the aftermath of this particular misadventure there’s a bunch of stuff in there that still looks awesome and will be tried later. The culprit today, however, was “Beef and Bayley Hazen Pie,” a concoction of rib meat, blue cheese, and some other strong flavors.

Cutting to the chase, this is a multi-day cook project, involving a from-scratch crust and a couple hours of stove time and still a long bake. This is not a fire-from-the-hip recipe. Regardless, Indy and I set about it and made steady progress. Right up until the final step of putting the shell together. See, in the book the final product is supposed to look like this:

I’m sorry, no. I am not making a giant asshole pie. I don’t care that the woman uses the whole pig or if she gives to charity or what, I simply will not serve a giant sphincter. But you all know what a classy motherfucker I am. And it’s pie dough, not marble, so I’m pretty sure I can figure something out. And I did.
Slightly nsfw below the jump.
(more…)

Ok, I know we’re starting to sound like a one-note monkey here asking y’all to open your wallets, but fuckall if I’m going to let that stop me on this one. Posting this from the road is a pain in the ass, so I’ll be brief.

Tam has a problem.

Lawdog and Old NFO and others you can see linked there (sorry, shitty keyboard makes linksmithing a pain in the ass- details are at LD and NFO’s) are working a solution. Go click over to them, open your wallet up, and do some direct good for one of the people who caused us to start blogging in the first place, and her links to us are a big reason we got enough traffic starting out to even keep bothering trying to gin up the stuff y’all seem to inexplicably like. There’s prizes and shit. Go. Donate.

Ok, my apologies for the delay. I know everybody else has had their Kilted to Kick Cancer rewards up for a while now. Right around Blogorado o’clock, my project at work went on the chopping block, to simplify, so the day job has been in panic mode for the better part of the month. Combine that with functionally all of my non-work hours being absorbed by various other commitments, free time has been at something of a premium.

That said, time to make good. The audio of The Waxing is available here, and will be going up in the sidebar once I’m done editing this post. I had to pull in a favor from FarmGirl to get this cleaned up and in a useful format, and it amused her greatly, so there is also a sped up version that sounds like Alvin and the Chipmunks available here. Big thanks to FG for the help; this would still be sitting in my to-do pile and wouldn’t have the bonus comedy version otherwise.

The songs are still coming. I promise they’re not forgotten, and pretty much everybody who was crazy enough to send in for the drawing has said “Just post it!” so I’m going to save a step of picking winners and just do that. You all won, hooray!

Thank you all very much for your donations. To have raised $2400 just from my blatherings on the internet for such a good cause is humbling. I mean it honestly when I say I hope you all enjoy hearing me suffer for every penny (and yes, there was a lot of alcohol involved. Duh.).

Why are you doing this to me?! First you brought him a mace, then a blowgun, and now you turned his rifle into a stabbing gun?! *gestures at small holes in the drywall* What do you think is going to happen when you do these things? STOP STABBING THE CEILING!

Ok, slightly bait-and-switchy, but it got your attention didn’t it? Our friend Stephen Bodio seems to have gone and gotten a new book out.

I have not read this tome yet myself, but I do intend a copy to go in the ever-expanding pile of matter I intend to read, despite said pile rapidly approaching a volume sufficient to collapse in on itself and begin a self-sustaining fusion reaction. The man knows of whence he speaks, and while raptors are not a niche most, if not all, of the readership here will never have more than passing contact with, how can you argue against the inherent coolness of working with an animal that is essentially a vector calculus engine attached to a propulsion unit and a bag of knives? They can be funny, too.

If you’re so inclined, you may find An Eternity of Eagles through a handy Amazon referral that will benefit two people a once with no additional cost to you. I’m looking forward to when ever I can mow through enough of the to-read backlog to get on this one.

Home from the unfairly cold north. No, seriously, it’s still 75ish here and most Columbus Days we’re doing well to see the north side of 50. I WANT MY COLD WEATHER BACK DAMMIT.

Right.

Anyway, home again home again jiggity-jig. The main Recording will go up once I’ve got it and reviewed it to make sure I didn’t use any verboten words or phrases, because as hard as this may be to believe, there was alcohol involved.

Song folks, sorry, but I didn’t get to the drawing on that yet because busy. And lyrics not done. And besides, if of the five or six of you who were interested have it that high up your priority list, you’ve got bigger problems than a late selection notice.

Regular content to resume once the urge to stab and stab until all is silent for 20 seconds at a stretch has passed.

*slow, dramatic crashing noise, as of giant falling down a beanstalk*

“I said SNIFF him, not SUBDUE him!!”

Who knew you’d turn out to be our very own not-crazy Richard Dawkins?

…are here.

Three.
Fucking.
Dollars.

Right. More importantly, thank you all for every last cent of your donations. I know everything sucks big rocks off the ground for everybody right now money-wise, and that the blatherings of a semi-anonymous goober in New Mexico* were able to convince you all to part with that much money awes me. Awes me and makes me think I should finally get around to using my Powers for actual evil.**

The various promised rewards of dubious value will go up as soon as I’m able to get them. I’m sorry I can’t have everything ready the second Blogorado is over or whatnot, but the pressures from my work and social lives at this point have me honestly grateful that the drive is over for the year, so maybe I can have time in the day to do the little things like eat or acknowledge LabRat. It’ll be at least a week though, probably a bit more. I will actually have time to go through the song raffle before then, since most of you had the good sense to stay way the hell away from that offer, and I’ll let the two unlucky folks know on Wednesday, but the actual mp3s won’t be ready until… yeah, you get the idea. If you’re demented and still want in on that but just didn’t get around to sending in the receipt, I’ll still take them right up to that point. Just throw raffle somewhere in the subject.

Those of you going to Blogorado, I suspect there won’t be any shortage of recording devices, but if you have something with particularly decent audio pickup, I’d be obliged if you’d bring it along.

Just on the push from the one month, we raised very nearly double what it took the better part of 2011 and part of 2012 to raise. I suspect the final number will creep up some, but so far just for 30 days we took in $22,475.55, and we did it without global megacorporations kicking in x% of however much a roll of paper towels the guys in accounting decided would buy good advertising. Suck it, Komen (and, y’know, keep saving the boobies and all. But still, suck it.).

Thank you all.

*Hey, Kelly? Y’think since I was the third highest fundraiser we can get New Mexico colored in on that coverage map now?
**Actually most of you would probably approve of the ends I’ve in mind. We’ll talk later. Somewhere private.

Right off, y’all are flat amazing. I want to deeply thank every one of you who donated. By hitting the $2000 mark, that’s four times my original goal, which based on last year’s efforts I thought was fairly ambitious. I am utterly blown away by this.

But there’s still 55 hours left in this to go. This party don’t stop until the cops come.

So if y’all are going to insist on blowing my mind every step of the way, then all right, motherbitches, it’s nightmare-hard mode time. If at 23:59 Central time on September 30, my fundraising total is higher than Jay’s, I will take my freshly waxed self over at Blogorado and Jay is gonna get a lap dance whether he likes it or not, and video goes up. Think of it as a victory teabagging after a come from behind win. I haven’t discussed this with him, so it could get interesting.

Donate here. You’ve got…fifty five hours and thirty minutes to kick the total up by another $2,890 as of current standings. Ambitious? Oh hell yeah. Let’s do this.