Atomic Nerds

Inspired by Doqz who probably did not give in to the completely understandable urge to smack someone upside the head who was apparently under the impression that Tyler Durden was a heroic or even sympathetic character.

(Disclaimer: If you have not seen Fight Club, this post will be spoileriffic, but man, you have had a LOT of time to see it, so if you actually still care I’d get on that, were I you.)

Look, I like Fight Club a lot too. It’s a fun, fast-paced, and interesting movie, and contains two talented actors having more fun with their roles than should be legal, which always makes for an entertaining viewing experience. We have the DVD, watch it every so often when the urge strikes. It’s a good movie and Edward Norton and Brad Pitt, and the central premises of the story, are what make it so. But their characters are not supposed to be good guys- if it weren’t for the obvious technicality it would be a straight up case of a villain protagonist.

The basic premise of the character(s) is that a guy who feels unloved by his father and abandoned by his mother blames his meaningless life on the entire rest of society as a whole, purposely targets the most vulnerable other men he can find, and eventually turns them into a terrorist organization whose purpose boils down to the destruction of civilization. YES, Tyler’s got a point from time to time, which is what makes it an interesting movie and what makes it possible for it to work with that whole “villain protagonist” thing- but pulling society screaming back into the dark ages because daddy didn’t love you and your Ikea collection isn’t fulfilling isn’t supposed to be an admirable goal.

For that matter, the question of what’s supposed to be so much more fulfilling about beating the shit out of strangers is begged, and if you’re paying attention, answered- aside from the adrenaline rush, the people involved wind up pawns for a megalomaniacal sociopath, and in many cases killed. “Space monkey”, indeed.

When I was a relatively young kid, and I don’t remember at one point, I watched once a very weird but to-me compelling little sci-fi/fantasy cartoon when I happened to catch it on TV. It leaped out at me just because of how *different* it was from the eighties crap factory that was normal fare; even when you’re under ten you have some sense of what’s just like everything else on TV (and in that particular era, it was cookie-cutter variations of a particularly pernicious theme. It was set in a prehistoric era, the characters were talking cats and their nemeses were talking saber-toothed cats, it was weird, and to my mind it was wonderful. And I couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was called after I saw it the once. Some years later while bored and hanging out in a library while on vacation, I happened by chance across the book it had been based on; it was even weirder and more wonderful, being specifically set with Miocene-era predators that I recognized from what I knew about mammals of that era, and in retrospect it had some pretty advanced and challenging themes (to then adolescent me) on the nature of intelligence and identity, as well as morality, as the nature of the “good” and “bad” characters was far greyer than I was used to. It also had the weirdest sex scene I had ever read. And once again I promptly forgot the title and the author but not how much I had liked it.

Thanks to the randomosity of the internet- and truly, it is random, for I already can’t remember how I got there- I found it again. The author is Clare Bell, and it’s the Ratha and the Named series. I’m going to order at least the first one; it may not be as good as I remember, but at the very least I can read it again, finally.

Totally unrelated to books or anything nostalgic for me, thank God, have a look at possibly the most disturbing video game series ever created. It’s one thing to have your game be blatantly sexual, and not heterosexual either, but it’s quite another to have one of your characters be a giant naked guy riding in half a planet. Only the Japanese can combine sexuality and sheer weirdness quite like this.

I’ve mentioned before that I like turnips, and the only real upside of winter in general, food-wise, is that I have an excellent excuse to make all the root vegetable-centric stuff I want, as I tend to love them all. Beets, rutabagas, turnips, parsnips, jicama, sweet potatoes, radishes- if it used to be covered in dirt, odds are I’ll like it braised or roasted. (Not boiled, please.) This seems to be a personal peculiarity of mine, as in America the only broadly acceptable root vegetable is the relatively boring and flavorless white potato.

So I’ve wanted to make the Pioneer Woman’s turnip gratin ever since I saw the recipe, but never could find a convincing argument to add it as my contribution to the holiday table, as Stingray and I are, as typical, the only people in the family that are remotely enthused about turnips. I’ve floated the idea of just saying it’s “gratin” and letting people figure out for themselves whether they like it, but Stingray assures me this will not work. So, even though we’re going to wind up with a metric ton of leftovers, I came to the conclusion that if I ever want to try it, it’ll have to be for just the two of us. Even though I maintain that with that much cheese, butter, and garlic, it could be sliced softball in there and just about anybody would give it a rave.

The nice thing about Pioneer Woman is that she illustrates her recipes photo by photo and step by step; no Minimalist Chef for her. So if you want an actual easy-to-follow recipe and not a record of my fumblings, follow the link and use that. The brief, printer-friendly recipe is at the bottom and is the one I’ll be quoting.

Ingredients

* 4 whole Turnips
* 3 cloves (to 4 Cloves) Garlic
* 2 cups Gruyere Cheese
* 4 Tablespoons (to 6 Tablespoons) Butter
* Chicken Broth
* Heavy Cream
* Salt And Pepper (to Taste)
* Fresh Herbs (to Taste)

Stingray refused to buy a fresh brick of Gruyere for the occasion, as the stuff is twenty bucks a brick, so I had to rely on whatever was left of the one he used to make french onion soup two weeks ago plus whatever amount of mozzarella I felt it needed to fill out the cheese requirements. I also used no fresh herbs, as our outdoor garden is dormant for the winter, our indoor herb garden is quite, quite dead as we both have a black thumb when it comes to keeping plants alive anywhere but outside, and I didn’t think to get any at the grocery store. That place has been like the fall of Saigon all holiday season, and we tend to be trying to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

Preparation Instructions

Preheat the oven to 375º.

Start by peeling and thinly slicing the turnips and mincing the cloves of garlic. Grate about 2 cups of Gruyere cheese.

In a large oven-proof skillet melt 2-3 tablespoons of butter over medium-low heat. Place a single layer of turnips on top of the butter. Next, sprinkle a little of the garlic on top, then – and this is purely optional and really not all that necessary – add a couple of tablespoons of butter. Next drizzle a healthy splash of chicken broth over the turnips. Next, do the same with the cream. Now add a nice layer of Gruyere – about ½ cup. Sprinkle a bit of salt, but not much as the cheese is already salty.

Repeat these layers twice more. Sprinkle on some freshly ground black pepper.

Now pop the whole thing into the over and bake for about 20 minutes or until the top is hot, brown and bubbly.

1. Preheat the oven. Start assembling your lab station mise. Get the turnips and- wow, that’s quite a healthy growth. Guess it’s been a little while since we brought these home. No worries; turnips keep pretty well even sprouted. They’ll just be not quite as sweet, is all. Lop off the tops and discard; the spouse probably won’t eat turnip greens even if we keep ‘em. Cast a critical eye over your collection of turnips and fret a bit; the recipe says “four turnips”, but turnips are about as uniform in size and shape as hailstones. Too much? Not enough? Shove it out of your mind; it’s gratin, not baking.

2. Peel the turnips over the garbage can. Fortunately, they don’t produce slime in quite the same inimitable fashion as potatoes do, so there’s no worries about fumbling the damn things like a greased football. Don’t worry about fliers, Kitchen Bitch will keep the floor clean for you, as she’s the only other family member besides Stingray that shares your affection for turnips.

3. Haul out the mandoline and blink at it for awhile, as it is only slightly less mysterious-looking than an obsidian monolith, and we all know our track record with kitchen gadgets with spotty doucmentation. Stare at it for a bit until you notice the sharp blade in the center; try dragging a peeled turnip over it with a bit of force. It produces a slice. Apparently all these other grooves are to keep the vegetable moving easily. That was easier than it looked.

4. Let the thought that what you’re doing seems slightly dangerous pass through your mind like a fleeting summer cloud as you drag the turnip over the blade again and again. Repeat until the inevitable happens and you slice open one of your fingers. As you stanch the bleeding, your concerned spouse will fish the handguard that came with the mandoline out of a drawer for you. Allow him to demonstrate, as the thing looks like a gynecology device from the Hellraiser series. As it turns out, it works by spiking the turnips so that you can drag the turnip over the blade with several inches of spike and black plastic between your flesh and the blade.

5. Begin the somewhat boring task of turning all four of your turnips into thin slices. Work out that you can keep the slicing going as the turnip gets thinner by rotating the turnip and re-spiking it more shallowly; nonetheless you’re still going to wind up with a bastard slice at the end that is much thicker than the others and yet completely impossible to safely slice thinner. Optional: let your mind wander over the fates of the various singers on the nineties alternative station you’ve taken to listening to while cooking. Cobain: suicide. Gwen Stefani: batshit. Fiona Apple: technically still has a career, but nobody seems to have noticed. Courtney Love: undead.

6. Once you’ve arranged your sliced turnips in haphazard stacks to save room on the cutting board, retrieve your partial brick of Gruyere. Raise an eyebrow at it; no way that’s going to be two cups. Fish the shredded mozzarella out of the fridge and set aside to supplement when needed. Start grating the Gruyere. Wish you had a handguard for the grater as you scrape your fingers several times as the cheese whittles down closer and closer to the rind. Optional: Kitchen Bitch thinks she deserves the entire rind. She’s wrong. Call your other dog and give him half. Now you have double the Akita to step around, as he won’t leave.

7. Wow. That worked out to exactly two cups of Gruyere. It’s the Miracle of the Leftover European Cheese.

8. Select four cloves of garlic, press with a cleaver to get them out of their skins, and remind yourself that mincing the garlic with a big sharp knife and using the dedicated garlic-mincing devices are roughly equal in degrees of pain in the ass factor, but the knife is at least easier to clean. Wash your hands and the knife once through. Damn sticky delicious garlic.

In a large oven-proof skillet melt 2-3 tablespoons of butter over medium-low heat.

9. Haul out the giant cast iron skillet and whack three tablespoons’ worth of butter in there. Turn the heat up to medium low. Amuse yourself by twisting the pan around like a handheld pinball game to get the melting knob of butter evenly coating the skillet. Admire the pretty white snowflake patterns the milk sugars make.

Place a single layer of turnips on top of the butter. Next, sprinkle a little of the garlic on top, then – and this is purely optional and really not all that necessary – add a couple of tablespoons of butter. Next drizzle a healthy splash of chicken broth over the turnips. Next, do the same with the cream. Now add a nice layer of Gruyere – about ½ cup. Sprinkle a bit of salt, but not much as the cheese is already salty.

10. Gather up what looks like roughly one-third of the turnips and start arranging. Put the thickest slices, and the ones with one thick edge and one thin, so that they cover the edges of the pan, and thinner slices and edges toward the middle. The most mangled, mutant slices can be fed to Kitchen Bitch and to your other dog, who is apparently into turnips as well. Take roughly one-third of the garlic and sprinkle. Wash your hands of the sticky garlic. Slice off another tablespoon of butter and break it up to drop pieces over the turnip. Wash your hands again. This could get old. Splash the chicken broth and the cream.

11. Sprinkle about one-third of the Gruyere over your layer. That… doesn’t look like enough cheese, recipe be damned. We’re already piling on the milkfat, so whatever. Supplement with a generous handful of the mozzarella, which you never got around to putting back in the fridge anyway. Dash a little salt-and-pepper mix over the whole thing.

12. Repeat with the remaining thirds of everything. Hand-washing including, which does indeed get old.

Now pop the whole thing into the over and bake for about 20 minutes or until the top is hot, brown and bubbly.

13. Tweak the oven dial irritably as it never did come up all the way to 375 and shove it in. Set the kitchen timer for twenty minutes and retreat with a cold beer to go start writing or whatever it is you do during cooking interludes.

14. That is not brown, although it is bubbly. Give it another five minutes.

15. It’s at least brown in places, the steak still needs cooking, and everybody’s hungry. Pull it out and leave it to sit there in the cast iron and retain heat while your spouse puts meat to fire. Once he’s done with that, spoon it up and chow down.

This was as tasty as it sounded, although it would indeed have been better with turnips as sweet as I know turnips are capable of becoming when cooked. Next time I’ll also let it brown more- the brownest portions of the crust were the best part. I’ll also use quite a bit more cheese; it could have used more Gruyere, more mozzarella, both, or even a third white cheese for variety. I should have taken it as a hint when Pioneer Woman mentioned she used a lot more than three cups; Stingray tends to double cheese portions in dishes like this. Still, all of this would merely be further refinement of something that is already very good as-is.

It struck me today after a brief bit of conversation in #gunblogger_conspiracy, that the unaccountably popular Rocky Horror Picture Show is the entertainment equivalent of herpes.

*It’s awkward and uncomfortable when someone tells you about it.

*It’s unpleasant, but not generally fatal.

*Two persons both afflicted can safely go nuts with each other.

*It never goes completely away, and has periodic flare-ups.

*If you’re not already infected, you sure as hell don’t want to be.

*There does not appear to be any sort of cure.

The only real difference is that if I was in some bizarrely contrived situation with a choice between contracting herpes and being involved in that …whatever the hell it is, I’d be in the pharmacy after a bottle of valtrex the next day.

Vicious Circle 30: Lazy Liver is up and ready for your listening. There may have been some alcohol consumed as well as discussed. Just a helpful warning.

It’s the beginning of the weekend and I’d rather bake than rant, so you get a recipe today. No Cooking Noob; this one is so straightforward that even I can’t get anything amusing out of the preparation process.

One of the very few holiday-related baked goods I have a thing for is cranberry bread. I remember it being a regular holiday feature when I was little, but given that half the people I even mention it to have never heard of it, I’ve come to the conclusion it’s not so much the treasured classic I viewed it as a kid as it is something that somebody in the Unitarian church I was raised in must have baked for damn near every bake sale and pot luck. So now that I’m not so hopeless in the kitchen anymore, when Thanksgiving rolled around I tracked down a recipe and made some. It disappeared very rapidly, so I tweaked it more to my tastes and made it again. And now you can, too.

Cranberry Bread

2 cups flour
2/3-3/4 cups sugar, depending on how sweet you want it
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup cranberries, fresh, frozen, or dry
3/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup butter
1 tbsp orange zest
1 egg

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 F.
2. Mix all the dry goods together, then mix in berries until they are well coated with the dry.
3. Beat the egg in another bowl, add orange juice and zest. Melt the butter, then mix in with the rest of the wet team.
4. Add the wet to the dry and mix until a coherent batter is formed.
5. Pour and scrape into a loaf pan. Bake 50 minutes to an hour, or until well browned on top and passing the toothpick test.
6. Cool in the pan for ten minutes, then turn it onto whatever surface you have in mind to finish cooling.

If you’re using dried cranberries, especially sweetened ones, it’s a good idea to give them a half-hour soak before using to get some water in and sugar out. During consultation in IRC, Breda suggested using a half and half mix of hot water and some form of alcohol; given the orange juice in this recipe, Triple Sec would probably work very well for this purpose. Chop up your cranberries or leave them intact as you prefer; some like the “bursty” tartness of whole berries, others prefer theirs more distributed.

Some people also like to add walnuts or pecans to this. I can’t imagine why, but if that floats your boat have at.

Stingray likes his toasted and buttered. I like mine with cream cheese.

In the past I’ve made plenty of hay over hyper-reactive atheist groups that seem to be convinced that the Methodists down the street intend to crucify them if they ever get a little too over-excited at a church supper, and tend to spend their time griping about the Pledge, crosses in national cemetaries, and so forth. I don’t think much of them, if it’s not apparent, and since qualitatively speaking I’ve been persecuted more for my politics, choices in body art, and preference in handguns than my lack of faith, I usually don’t see much of a reason for them to even exist.

It’s therefore easy for me to forget that legitimate civil rights battles over atheism do still exist: North Carolina Bars Atheists From Holding Public Office.

It’s not a new law- it probably dates back to one of the more enthusiastic periods of religious revival in American history- but it IS being used as a challenge to an openly atheist man who recently won a clear electoral victory to hold public office. It wasn’t exactly a big dark buried secret that hoodwinked the vulnerable voters of North Carolina; it’s right there on his Facebook page. And it’s right there on the NC Constitution that no atheist can hold public office in that state. It’s also right there in Article VI of the US Constitution that no religious test shall ever be required for public office, so this is going to hold up in federal court about as well as a Kleenex in a hailstorm and the end result will be costing North Carolina a big chunk of change for a law they should damn well have known better than to have written into their Constitution.

The other interesting thing about this case is that the man who brought the challenge is the former president of the local chapter of the NAACP, which adds a nice coating of ironysauce to the whole proceeding. I can’t imagine what he thinks he’s going to gain from it- unless he’s a secret atheist crusader looking to get it brought to court so that the law can be shot and buried- but the last page of the article hints that he’s a bit of a fruitcake anyway, so maybe it’s just for the sake of any kind of publicity at all.

The comments both at the Asheville article and the Hot Air article are predictably depressing. Judging by the various currents of public opinion, North Carolina should be free to do anything it wants up to and including child sex slavery if that’s what they wrote into their Constitution in order for federalism to be preserved, the entire South should secede again (depending on the flavor of commenter, either to get away from fascist Yankees or to rid the rest of the country of incestous yahoos), religious tests for public office are totally awesome because atheists are ahead of Christians on the oppression scoreboard and the Jesus side needs more points as we go into the final half, and none of it matters because God’ll give the whole lot of us a good telling off after we die, that’ll show us.

Astute readers may have noticed the calendar creeping steadily on to the most magical arbitrary date of the year, Christmas. That splendid and magical time of the year where we all still hate each other just as much and are just as pissed off as any other time, but now we have to pretend that everybody loves each other, peace in our time on earth, good will towards that rat bastard man, etc.

I suspect my position on the matter has grown clear already, but let me just hit a few of the high notes that grate with particular vigor on my sanity starting any time after Halloween.

To start with, let’s address the music. I am firmly of the position that if the music is so fucking terrible that it is only acceptable once per year, then it’s probably a good idea to just skip it then, too. There are of course excuses and cop-outs. After all, there’s a long tradition of utterly insipid crap being wildly popular, such as Raffi. Raffi, however, is targeted at a group too young to realize that the proper response to such music is unabashed violence. Their parents know this, but have to listen to it anyway. This, in turn, supports the hard liquor industry, and I benefit from that, so crap like Raffi gets a pass. Christmas carols, on the other hand, serve no useful purpose other than to inspire rage and hatred. The night would be a lot more silent if you wailing dupes would shut the fuck up. I have no particular inclination to cavort about in an open sleigh when I have a truck with this remarkable little device called a heater that will cause the trip to suck several orders of magnitude less. The little boy with the drum can just go sit on those drumsticks- aside from the saccharine message of the whole thing, what sort of retarded jackass starts banging away on a drum like Keith Moon in front of a fucking newborn? As for the classic and thus clearly intellectual “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies,” I’ve reached the point where I feel applause is the correct response should anybody take it upon themselves to shove an oboe up the player’s posterior sideways and then use the combined entity to set fire to an oboe factory. Possibly also a small cash award and commemorative plaque.

Next up, we have the charity groups. “HELP PEOPLE IN NEED! HELP PEOPLE IN NEED! I’VE GOT A FUCKING BELL AND I’M GOING TO MAKE SURE YOU KNOW BECAUSE THIS BELL IS TOTALLY AWESOME!! YOU CAN STOP GIVING A SHIT IN JANUARY BUT MY MAGIC BELL OF MIGRAINES COMPELS YOU!” If any budding investigator would like a piece that would surprise literally dozens, look into the financial relationship between tylenol, aleve, and those jangling assholes stationed on every street corner, grocery store, and shopping area of any kind. I know I boost those company’s stocks during this time of the year, and that incessant clanging cacophony is why. Eleven months out of the year the hard up and downtrodden can go piss up a rope, but then magically after the fourth Thursday in November it’s CARE O’CLOCK, BITCHES! Look, let me actually make a helpful suggestion. You want to separate me from my loose change so Ray-Ray the System Gamer can have an extra target to score dope money from for a month? Then give me some incentive do do anything other than leave the area as quickly as possible. Instead of standing there acting as the fucking Headache Fairy, hire some girl with big tits to stand in the cold topless and demonstrate just how awful things are if you can’t afford a coat. I guarantee you, if you take that route to fund raising for charity my reaction absolutely will not be contemplating how many possible ways there are to kill a man with a small hand-held bell.

Moving right along, we have the ever tacky seasonal clothing. This one falls under the same category as the music: if it’s that awful, just leave it in the closet. Parading around in that stupid polyester Santa-cap doesn’t make you look festive and jolly, it makes it look like there’s a fucking epidemic of brain-eating parasites parading around disguised as haberdashery (although cold-activated brain parasites would go quite a long ways to explaining the bullshit rampant in December). Think that sweater with the light-up Rudolph nose is just the bee’s knees? Let me ask you this, has battery operated clothing ever had even the slightest shred of dignity, taste, or even just been free from giving the impression that the wearer is a tacky jackass? No? Then why does wearing one with a fucking alcoholic caribou suddenly become a good idea? Marching around sporting a smiling ice golem on your sweater/gloves/coat doesn’t do anything positive for you either, other than serve as a helpful advertisement to people like me that we should avoid the shit out of you- if only you’d let us, instead of glomming on to anything that doesn’t look like it’ll commit suicide within five minutes of your inane “Isn’t this time of the year WONDERFUL?!” speech. I saw an older couple in the grocery store the other day wearing matching holiday sweaters, and wandering around with such an inane expression, the sweaters were the only indication that they weren’t on powerful hallucinogenics, and frankly, I’d prefer to be around geezers tripping balls instead, because at least then one might be a WWII vet and give a kick-ass demonstration of how to clear an enemy tunnel.

Finally, to wrap things up before I find myself mad enough to go strangle a Santa with his own shitty fake beard, let’s turn to the scourge of holiday advertising. There are two approaches to this noxious blight, and both are vile pits of festering bullshit, attempting nothing more than turning the entrenched tradition of what used to be a perfectly healthy and decent blood sacrifice to make the sun come back into jangling cash registers (next to the fuckwad with the bell, of course). The first is the school favored by Mars candy, specifically M&Ms, to make one commercial and then stick with it, ’cause if it was good enough in 1995, it’s good enough now. I don’t know who was originally responsible for the campaign in which two brain-damaged anthropomorphic candy pieces confront a delusional home-invader dressed in a pimp suit, only to have everybody faint in shock from either hallucinating two brain-damaged anthropomorphic candy pieces or from confronting a delusional home-invader dressed in a pimp suit, but I have a coil of barbed wire, two gallons of gasoline, sixteen rolls of duct tape, five lemons, and a year’s worth of back issues of “Cat Fancy” with their name on it. Should be a pretty good party if I ever catch the son of a bitch. Mars is not exclusive to this approach, however, and I’m sure everybody out there has their own individual “Oh, fuck. It’s time for that ad again,” but no matter how you slice it this lazy pile of bullshit is as certain to invade our homes as a liberal is to be a pussy about… well, anything really. The other school is to trot out a new ad each year, and while this at least earns points for not being as patently and obviously phoned-in, the downside is that each year the company feels it must top last year’s ad, leading to greater and greater levels of blistering obnoxiousness. The Gap and Old Navy are the current kings of this school, each year running a campaign that turns into a contest of wills to see if they can actually make me get out of the house to find them and destroy them, their parents, their children, their siblings, and anyone else I can find with even one genetic tie to the creators of the ads. So far this year I haven’t seen Fran Drescher in any commercials, but I suspect they’re saving the big guns until I’m closer to snapping. Honestly, if your Great Marketing Idea is to use Fran Drescher for anything other than a reactive target, you are a fucking idiot and you need to be separated.

I like my friends. I like doing nice things for my friends to indicate that I like them, such as sending gifts or well wishes. Upon the collection of seasonal traditions for December ranging from mildly embarrassing to murderously infuriating, however, it is my sincerest hope that the sacrifice fails, and the sun never returns so that every last polyester Santa hat can freeze in the dark for eternity.

Humbug.

On this date, a good many good people died and heralded the beginning of a whole hell of a lot more Americans dying for various causes that just about everybody agreed were a good idea after a sufficient number of years had passed. At the time, usually not so much, something that we tend to forget easily whenever comparing our current overseas adventures to the one we supposedly all agreed on.

As always it is a good idea to take lessons from past tragedies. In this one, we can learn that crazily ambitious imperialists with no natural resources of their own have interesting to reactions to resource embargoes, and that it is a very bad idea in the long run to drop flaming objects on massive industrial powers with otherwise isolationist inclinations that have a cultural tradition of taking such things extremely personally. It may lead to being the testing ground for science projects and having Americans camped in your back yard for the next seventy years.

“…What the dick? There’s jihad in our comments.”