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Where is the Random Thread of Randomness stuff that doesn't belong in other threads thread?

I should have been doing some bookkeeping. I had at least a half hour between mowing lawn and starting dinner. I could've made a solid dent in it. But when I got in The Dog NEEDED to be petted for 12 minutes straight so at that point I'm just like, "fuck it, I'll screw off online."
 
TIL the Harlem Globetrotters were from Chicago.

They got their start as a promotion for a Chicago dancehall but got fired after a month, so their coach had his tailor dad make uniforms that said "New York" on them to be more exotic and interesting to Midwest towns that they played "barnstorming" games at. When he realized the fact that the players were black and many of the towns they played in had never seen a black person, he changed the name to "The Harlem Globetrotters" to highlight that they were black but also imply they were cosmopolitan.
 
CAPTAIN'S LOG, 2143.4: I may have made a mistake. A horrible, horrible ass-bleeding mistake. I have a friend. We once went through a martini phase. He could consistently make a competently good martini because he had it down to a science and measured out all the ingredients while I shot from the hip. So I could make an amazing martini or a terrible one and the only thing you could be sure of is that no two would taste exactly the same.

Today I have a dish I call "gumbolaya." It is part gumbo and part jambalaya. And don't ask me to explain the differences because I can't remember them. I had skin and bones left over when I'd make chicken stir fry. At first I threw them away. Then I'd make chicken soup in the crock pot, but it was never that good, so I developed gumbolaya, which is amazing. It isn't much to look at, but if I could marry it I would. So tasty.

The problem is that there's a lot of ingredients. I remember them well enough at this point that I don't have to figure it out every time I make it but this also means I sometimes forget something. Or add something. Also, sometimes what I'm looking for isn't in the store. Okra. I usually go frozen because it is a nice balance of easy and tasty. I've used fresh, I've used canned. Sometimes I've forgotten it. Sometimes I forget the jalapeno. Or don't feel like peeling an entire clove of garlic. Sometimes I have to get whatever Ro*tel can the store has. This time they had the "hot" which I realized with some trepidation, involved habaneros. And I got the jalapeno. And I added a fair amount of chili powder. And a fair amount of Tabasco. I did not wash my hands after getting everything fried and into the crock pot so after rubbing my eye, I sat with that eye closed and/or furiously blinking until I could make it to the bathroom to wash it. Even after washing my hands, there's still a lot of capsaisin on them.

In the past I have managed to make chile con carne that was so hot it made me ill. It was tasty but it also put me out of sorts. I fear this gumbolaya. Because I'm sure it will be delicious. I'm equally sure I will pay a terrible, terrible price for enjoying it. After the initial pain of consuming it, I shall have to wait 12-18 hours for the Ring of Fire as it exits the system.

[EDIT]Oh, and the sausage I got was a discontinued DEVIL'S ANUS SPICY flavor.
 
What the hell. Gumbolaya:

Chicken thighs and/or skin and bones left over from another chicken dish. Get a little bag of them precooked salad shrimp and the biggest cheap "Slim Jim" type snack you can find. Add an onion, a garlic, a bell pepper, a jalapeno, celery, maybe a tomato, a can of Ro*Tel, white rice, olive oil, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, assorted spices that seem right (black pepper, onion salt, celery salt, paprika, mustard powder, chili powder).

Throw the rice in the crock pot on high with enough water and some garlic salt while you chop up all the other ingredients (except for the Ro*tel) and toss them into a saucepan on medium heat. When they seem done enough, reduce heat on the crock pot and dump it all in, add the Ro*tel and maybe some beer and bourbon if it seems right. Let the bastard sit for at least 12 hours. Enjoy.

[EDIT] You can add some ketchup or spaghetti sauce if you feel it isn't red enough.
 
I'm just going to get fat like Jabba the Hutt. I've been exercising and dieting (somewhat) since June or so. Was finally within 2-4 pounds of my "good enough" target goal. Last night I edged back to around 5# from it and tonight I'm back to 7# above where I'd be content to be. Fuck it, just embrace the fat. Even Arnold had to around the time he was my age.
 
I say again, knowing how a dog's brain works, Pavlov's experiments are considerably less impressive. Their brain is wired for routine. Best example is trash day. I've got a driveway gate and a pedestrian gate to the fence running off the back end of my house. We naturally use the pedestrian gate when we go for walks, but on trash day I open one side of the driveway gate because it's easier to maneuver the big wheeled trashcan through it. So there's a 4-5' wide opening in the fence that I've just walked through...and The Dog sits at the pedestrian gate and waits for me to open it so she can go for her walk.

They put up a gate across the street to the 2008 housing development that is finally getting built because people were driving through it. The Dog likes to hunt groundhogs and rabbits there and it took the longest time for her to understand that she had to go around the gate. Now that they're really ramping up construction the gate is often open--but it can be standing wide open and she still goes around the side of it--with such consistency that she steps on the same 2 "811-Dig" buried utility flags every time we go through.
 
The brain is a funny thing. Louisville Orchestra is premiering a score for "Nosferatu" in a few weeks. Tried to find any clips of it to see if I wanted to pony up for tickets with no luck so I'm instead watching the movie on YouTube and thinking about the book, "Dracula," and why I'm seeing Keanu Reeves as Harkness. And that's when I realize it is because Reeves played Harkness in Coppolla's 1991 "Dracula."
 
The chicken/egg dichotomy is stupid and I don't know why anyone who subscribes to evolution would haver: At some point in prehistory, something that was almost--but not quite--a chicken, laid an egg that would hatch into a chicken. Obviously, the egg came first. You can't have a bird until it hatches from an egg. And something that isn't a chicken can't come from a chicken egg. But something that is almost--but not quite--a chicken can lay an egg that contains a chicken. QED.
 
Watching No Doubt's "Spiderwebs" last night, after having to buy a new cell phone. 1) Gwen Stephani is so young and yummy. 2) Corded landline phones feature heavily in the video. And I got to thinking about how much things have changed over the years. First 1/3 of my life was pretty mundane. Touchtone phones, VCRs, cable TV, and the Commodore-64. Middle 1/3 saw cell phones, DVD, and the beginnings of broadband. Last 1/3 was the smartphone and pervasive broadband--which basically decimated everything before it. Video stores. Newsstands. All other brick and mortar stores. Roadmaps. MP3 players. All wiped out by smartphones and streaming.

I moved to Portland Oregon from SoCal with a brief stay at my childhood home in Wisconsin and how it happened is completely surreal and terrifying* in an era of online applications etc. I decided, after passing through over Labor Day weekend in 2002, that I wanted to live in Portland. I would join the local USMC reserve battalion and go to school on the GI bill, meet a cute girl in college, find a nice job, get married, buy a house, have a couple kids and live happily ever after. But I'm rambling. The point is, I had a Plan. But in those days there wasn't ApartmentFinder or Zillow or LinkedIn or Jobs.com. So I loaded up my car with things I thought I might need and drove from Wisconsin to Oregon. I bought a street map at a gas station and picked a hotel that seemed centrally located. I unloaded my car and put a "Do not disturb" sign on the door, got a newspaper, and looked at the classifieds for apartments. I drove around with my map and a phone that didn't even have a camera until I found a place I liked. I drove to the rental office, borrowed a pen to fill out an application, got approved, got my stuff and checked out of the hotel. I hit Target to buy a pool toy air mattress so I could sleep on the floor of my new apartment. I also got a 2 megapixel Canon Elph camera from CompUSA. Then I parked my car somewhere, flew back to Wisconsin, rented a U-Haul, and drove the rest of my stuff to Oregon. These days you'd line up a job and an apartment before you even left. And you wouldn't need to buy a camera because your phone would have one that is WAY beyond 2mp. Newspapers and street maps are long dead.

And the No Doubt video with the corded phones and lyrics about answering machines? Answering machines died with the WorldWide Web in the early '90s. I got rid of my landline in 2002. When I last moved I toyed with the idea of getting a landline but it turns out it is impossible. They don't have them anymore. They support existing lines but if you insist on a landline the best you might be able to get is a VoIP line. Circuit switching is not an option for new service. So my cool retro phone with touchtone buttons disguised as a rotary dial sits on an end table as conversational art, never to ring again.

*But nothing like the 19th century pioneers in covered wagons.
 
I do not care how much of a Star Wars fan you are, do NOT get fist-sized Rebel Alliance symbols tattooed on your breasts. Yikes. Tattoo artists need to say "no" sometimes. Shit, that's almost worse than a face/neck tattoo. Almost.
 
Volpone said:
I do not care how much of a Star Wars fan you are, do NOT get fist-sized Rebel Alliance symbols tattooed on your breasts. Yikes. Tattoo artists need to say "no" sometimes. Shit, that's almost worse than a face/neck tattoo. Almost.
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If I ever get Star Wars tattoos on my man breasts it will be the first and second Death Star. And maybe Yoda in my nether regions of Dagobah.
 
A fun science experiment is to eat a bland breakfast and lunch and then a really spicy dinner. In the morning, you're sitting down and going "Huh, I guess that wasn't that spice after all." And then the next time you sit down you go "there it is, the Ring of Fire."
 
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