Atomic Nerds

“….why are you teaching the dog to not fear fire?”
“You make it sound so sinister when you say it.”

Having just rescued a daddy long-legs from drowning in the shower, and my general track record on spider-friendliness and rescuing and making pets out of the eight-legged little buggers, it’s going to be deeply ironic if LabRat and I are wrong on this whole atheism thing and it turns out spiders are god’s indicator of evil – those who squish on sight earn brownie points sort of thing.

Oh well. I wouldn’t want to share heaven with a bunch of arachnophobes* anyway.

*Spellcheck felt this should be Anglophobes. I don’t know why that tickled my funnybone so hard but I’ve been snickering for five minutes straight.

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.
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And to all the good things that mean so much to people around the globe: being able to make light in darkness, having things that are still green in winter, having surplus food in winter/the dry season, and having friends and family that like you enough to share food and fuel with you if you don’t happen to.

Merry “fuck you planet, you’re not going to kill us this year”.

Back Tuesday.

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!

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.

Man, pants feel kinda weird now.

Sorry for the radio silence. We are running on a pretty big sleep deficit, thanks to lately everything in the world happening in the morning but needing most of the evening to wind down before sleep is possible. Kang is also in heat, and while this will only happen once before one of them is neutered, this means we are dealing with Overhormoned Intact Adolescent Male as well as Cranky Bitch Who Hates Being Female, and their acting out is damaging our zen, to put it very mildly. The roller derby world is also going through some final frantic do all the things and wrap up all the standings stuff before the offseason begins, so we basically have no weekends right now*. This is an issue because prior to this weekends were the time we got just about everything done.

The good news is things get a LOT quieter starting next month.

*For the lone reader who knows what I’m talking about, yesterday I got to be the wrangler, inside whiteboard, and scorekeeper all at the same time. *ref rolls up* “Ten!” *polite nod* *long mutual stare* “…And ten did, what exactly?” “No, points!” “oh” I’ve been self-medicating.

May be recycled content, but saying I’m glad of the chance to do so is like saying a man struck by lightning is feeling a little under the weather. It doesn’t really do the situation justice, now does it? At any rate:
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