Bing Slurry Surprise

A delightful little dish I whipped up on the fly this evening; the cherries occurred to me towards the end of cooking, but they really tied the whole meal together.

Makes two servings.

1 cup brown rice, 1 1/2 cups water
1 5.5 oz can sardines in tomato sauce (such as Ligo brand)
1/2 onion, 1/2 tomato, 1/2 cup fresh bing cherries; all chopped
half can of garbanzo beans
a touch of oil, a splash of milk, 2 tbs soy sauce, and a tbs of curry powder
a crumbling of feta

Directions:

Begin cooking your brown rice, either in a rice steamer or as directed.  Meanwhile heat a skillet/pan/wok/whathaveyou and some oil and begin chopping your onion.  There's no hurry; the rice will take a while to cook.
If you like, open up your tin of sardines and place fish, sauce, and all into a bowl by the sink.  There should typically be three or four fish torsos per can; take the time to split them open with your fingers and remove the spines.  Once done, add your curry powder and splash of milk and set aside for later.
Returning to the now hot pan, begin sauteing the onions on a MED-HI or MED setting.  After five minutes add the garbanzos and begin chopping yon tomato and pitting/chopping the wonderful Bing cherries.  Perhaps do it near a sink; that juice runs freely and stains everything!  Add to the pan and top off with your fish curry, turning the mixture down to a MED or MED-LO setting.  Add your soy sauce and whichever spices sound appropriate (I opted for a bit of black pepper) and nurse your curry as the rice cooks on.
Once the rice is finished and fluffed, platter up and serve under sauce, topping with a crumbling of feta and a cuppa your favorite tea.  And enjoy!  The surprise is how anybody can go without at least two tins of sardines in the pantry!  {A must, in this day and age of ours.}

Of Gods and Central Planners

So an interesting thought occurred to me as I slurp my morning cuppa, perusing Governor Rick Perry's website as I always do on Sunday mornings.  In the top banner there're blurbs of inspiration and facial likeness splashing across the screen, memorable quotes and so forth.  He keeps them simple:  "Don't spend all the money.  Keep taxes low.  Make regulations fair and predictable.  And stop the frivolous lawsuits that paralyze job creators."  "Getting America back to work starts with laying off our current president."

But the one that really made me sit up and smile this morning went along the lines of:

"It is up to this generation of Americans to take our future back from the grips of central planners who would control our healthcare, spend our treasure, downgrade our future, and micromanage our lives."

It strikes me that there's a wealth of information to be gleaned from this statement.  At first glance I'm scoffing at a man painfully out of touch with 'this generation,' though perhaps the Texan Young Republicans aren't such a hep set themselves...  Perry's use of terms like "central planners" and "treasure" seem taken straight out of McCarthy's* red scare lexicon and biblical parables, respectively.

Even in prayer, the governor has his eye on the presidency.

Particularly though, there's a glowing ire emanating from the statement's tone, a prickling of ego that at first glance seems out of place from such an outspokenly god-fearing man.  'How dare anyone control me,' all the while publicly (and arguably unconstitutionally) throwing himself and the fate of his constituents "in[to] God's hands,**" prayer circles and all.

It's a paradox, the god-and-caesar power shenanigans people play at; on the one hand professing to be in the wholesale throes of the whim of an omnipotently fearsome thing, yet all up in arms that a mere bureaucrat would dare to control what is rightfully God's sort-of-like.

Y'all get the picture, even if I don't really feel the need to paint out every last stroke.  At length I'd contend it's indicative of another political sociopath at work, a potentially opportunistic millionaire shamelessly shirking our social responsibilities while shielding himself and the poor feebs who vote for him by vague obligations to an at most distant superauthority.

A superauthority who clearly hates Texas, heart seemingly still unhardened by Perry's impressive prayer gathering earlier this month.

---

* On a side rant, fuck the Cold War; our pyrrhic victory forever besmirched the idea of a national health care program. 

** For all my online scouring, I couldn’t find an actual link to cite.  It’s ‘common knowledge,’ apparently.

And Then Along Comes Perry

For what it's worth, I'm glad longtime Texas governor Rick Perry has thrown his ten-gallon hat into the national ring.  Because now that he's in (and rather popular, according to the most recent polls) Perry's no-nonsense, candid-by-the-grace-of-God approach helps clarify the crossroad America again finds itself at in this upcoming election.

Now call me young and foolish, but the proverbial crossroad I'm referring to looks an awful lot like the one the country found itself at in 2008.  And 2004.  2000.... 1980....  Every election since 1820, and a few before.  In terms of direction, American voters have been grappling for quite a while over the roles of government and the private sector.

More than that, there is the vision of America voters will have to (again, try to) choose next November.  The electoral hiccup of last year's midterms notwithstanding, America had largely voted for Change and Hope (and that sort of thing) in 2008.  People voted for more accessible health care, for a more stable foreign and economic policy, for tightened regulation and market oversight; for bigger government, basically.

Feeling a bit young and foolish after the somewhat dismally slow (and at times, recidivist) executive movements churned out since '08, I nonetheless feel certain that despite the recent upsurge of Tea Partyist activism the majority of Americans remain moderate at the least, and at best are still hoping for something more out of their government.  Getting back to Rick Perry, I'd say as a candidate he epitomizes what America is really voting for or against:  a Christ-makes-White, apple pie, saccharine-neighborly and judiciously vindictive, bootstraps NIMBY amalgam of xenophobia and foreign tax shelters, of marginalized infrastructure and codified indifference.  A Dawn of the Working Poor sort of scape, where wide-o corporations do as they will with the privileges of unjailable people and the circus act of state legislatures, laughable state constitutions, and introverted local politics have free reign to rule the day.

Not quite that maybe, but in no uncertain terms the Tea Party banner is an anti-system movement, the monkeys wrenching up the apparatus (as so wonderfully put by NY Times columnist Charles M. Blow) so to speak.  But no critics can put the message better than candidate Perry himself, who recently promised (among other things) that "I'll work every day to make Washington, DC as inconsequential in your life as I can."  And that's the platform embraced by nearly all of his Republican peers currently vying for the presidency.  In 2012, a Republican vote will very likely be a vote cast for an idyllic non-president running a non-government.  

Serious changes are afoot, rumblings within the Grand Old Party that - if nothing else - will make the choice next November a lot more clearly defined.

Straw Dogs in the Political Manger

So in an admittedly underwhelming bit of news, Michele Bachmann won the first of many symbolic rites of passage for Republican presidential hopefuls, an ever-expanding array of candidates including Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, Newt Gingrich, libertarian pillar Ron Paul, gourmand and restaurateur Herman Cain, and the recently-added Texas governor and Bush sound-alike, Rick Perry.

Bachmann celebrates her hard-won triumph as 
Ames locals prepare their autumnal wicker man.
(photo from http://images.politico.com/global/news/110813_bachmann6_reut_328.jpg) 

At the risk of chiming in with the rest of the online world, I wonder aloud what's so damned fascinating about today's Iowa straw poll.  Boiling it down, it's essentially been a glad-handing affair involving a dozen thousand of the GOP's staunchest fans, more than half of whom singled out Tea Party frontispiece Bachmann and fringe-politician Ron Paul as their top choice.  Comparing this to national poll ratings, it places this majority of straw poll voters proportionally into a much narrower subgroup of actual, national voters.  Also taking into consideration Bachmann calls Iowa home, it's little wonder she took the victory ('narrowly' at that, says CNN).

Anyway, all I'm saying is that the media romance with Iowa (and yes, New Hampshire) should come to an end.  Not only are the states woefully unreflective of the nation as a voting whole (and relatively unimportant electorally), but using this flawed mechanism to weed out the candidates (adieu, Tim Pawlenty) in this day and age of instant telecommunication is our Old Sarum of the American political edifice.  It's a goddamn bit of misinformation and a colorful one at that, and like all misleading flashes of color it's the thing latently interested people look to first.

Last Box in the Closet

So I'm all moved in now, have the internet installed and running, and am otherwise settled into my Portland abode.  And what an abode it is!  Spacious apartment, affable roommate, working kitchen... rather comfortable, all told.  Now it comes down to acquainting myself with the neighborhood and familiarizing myself with the city itself.  I've spent Tuesday downtown across the river, a pleasant jaunt filled with sushi bars, beer, and Fred Williamson movies.  A great introduction, but certainly needing a bit of unremitting repeat in future.

Meanwhile, I've got to get a smash-grab on the job search.  Now that I've got internet service it should (ideally) go a bit smoother.  Here's to hoping, eh!

More as it comes.

Beginning Another End

Portland, Ho!

{Subtextually, the beginning of an urban adventure.}

More as it comes.

the Afghan Raiders

Composting

     So a news story has popped up today that caught my interest.  I was on the BBC when I saw it first of course, then followed a link to the FOX story (the first link) so I could link that on my twitter feed and perhaps throw in a witty little slur about FOX viewers' IQ.
     But something prevented me from so doing.  Partly it was the phrasing; I couldn't conscionably poke at a number of people's intelligence (simply for thinking differently than myself) without some sort of facts to back it up.  Enter the Google searches, where rather than finding anything conclusive or even remotely informative I was subjected to forum after forum of nitpicking, various blog entries (with varying grammatical and logical errors), and basically two ideologies pitted against each other in a semi-anonymous, all-out bickering environment.
     So I scrapped the tweet and delved into the warm composty goodness of online viscera, surprised at times by thoughtful answers and helpful links but mostly disappointed (and occasionally amused) by the slew of name-calling, racial bashing, and partisan sniping from either side (though <cough> one side seemed a bit more trigger happy than the other).  Which leads me to my sighing point, that really IQ is hardly a practical measure of worth in any case and that surprisingly few people could really describe what it represents, much less how that effects voting or web browser choice, or even favorite color, religion, etc.
     It's another status symbol, a latter-day cootie of the global schoolyard.  We may as well be reporting on average demographic thetan levels or blood type; either would make a similarly grand gesture at nothingness, sending people who deeply care about those things helter-skelter to change their browsers, clothing, soft drink, et al to the appropriate preference.  Because it's an ego thing, really a matter of preying on self-identity rather than news.

So while I may truly believe the FOX news family is aimed at exploiting and largely viewed by the generally ignorant, fearful, and/or bigoted, I have no hard facts to prove it.  Just gut instinct and a personal prejudice.