My New Musical Project

I am starting a band called Catfish Jones and the Bottom Feeders. I will always wax my mustache at our appearances.

I may sometimes play with Wyatt and the Earps, but I will not wax my 'stache at these shows. Even if Wyatt and the Earps open for Catfish Jones and the Bottom Feeders.

Now all I need to do is learn to play the guitar, get some instruments for my backing band, get a backing band, and write some songs. The wealth and fame will come as soon as everything else is built. I've already got a fan club, or maybe they're paparazzi. Whoever they are, they are the people that take my picture when they think I am not looking, they are the people that send their kids over to say they like my mustache at the Renn Faire, they are the people who stop and stare, they are the people who ask to have their picture taken with me.

I have only one question for these people, WHERE WERE YOU WHEN I WAS FAMOUS ON THE INTERNET!?!?

Tickling My Fallout Bone

Fallout: Nuka Break is pretty amusing, if you like the Fallout series of games. If you don't, you can just leave existence.

Why Are You Bothering?

No, this is not a Tuesday Random Ten as is Brando's style. This is a reaction to the people I am seeing at the library. Specifically, the four men sitting in different areas, and not obviously associated with each other aside from their nearly identical outfits. Faded t-shirt, basketball shorts, dark socks, and flip flops. All of these men are overweight, have grey hair, and should know better. Unless I am on a week-long bike trip across an entire state, or actively working out, I have enough self-respect to at least dress myself before leaving my house.

The salt of the earth people that the Republican'ts seem to legislatively hate and publicly love are said to complain constantly about the degradation of society. And yet, here we see four alleged gentlemen doing more to erode civilization than any two married gay men ever could. I can feel the barriers in my head between American and Thighbonewieldinghomohabilis eroding as I type.

I will confess to being slightly curious about why a person dressed like this would ever leave the house. Even on vacation, I will dress myself if I am leaving the house. If I am on a winter vacation, and not leaving the house, then I may stay in pajamas for an entire day. That is fundamentally different. I am also curious as to why one of these fools tucked his shirt into his Nike shorts. You can't be bothered to wear pants and shoes in public, but you're worried about having an untucked t-shirt? Momma sure didn't raise no fool.

Flip flops alone are enough to drive up my blood pressure. I think the callous use of flippy floppies is far more damaging to our society than vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases and infections. Put on some fucking shoes for the Baby Jesus! I bet if I installed a billboard with that slogan, I would get some traction with this issue. I'll just use the various Christian faiths to promote my not-at-all Christian political views and social agendas. That's worked so well in the past for the other people.

Cooking With The Genius: Back to School Night Scramble

Ingredients:
One (1) yellow onion from the farmer's market a few Saturdays ago
One and a half (1.5) cherry tomatoes that were 24 hours from the mulch pile (cut off the wrinkly-looking parts)
Two (2) green peppers from your landlord's garden
One (1) yellow-skinned cucumber from the same garden (whatever it is, it tastes and smells like a cucumber, but looks like a squash)
Olive oil
Sweet chili sauce
Hoisin sauce
One (1) can of baked beans because you're out of couscous, rice, and all other bland starch bases
One (1) package of Jiffy corn muffin mix because it is the best, but you can skip this stuff if all of your milk is from August and went bad a few weeks ago, but you haven't thrown it out because you're playing chicken with your roommates/NotWife

Toss some olive oil in your wok, click away if you're some sort of foodie poseur and don't own an actual wok, and get the heat going.  Dice your onion, green peppers, tomatoes, and what not.  You can throw in mushrooms or other veggies if you want, that was my intent until I checked the mushrooms and other veggies.  They had gone around the slimy bend.  I don't even know what one of the bags had in it, but it had brown skin before it went putrescent.  So dump the bad stuff in your compost heap, that's the trash can for you city-folk, wash your hands, and stir the wok.

Keep the wok going while you hunt for something to put this mess on.  While you're looking, you might want to spice the stuff.  I threw on some provincial herbs, ground ginger, and then found my sweet chili sauce in the fridge.  Toss some of this on there, say three tablespoons or so.  That gives it some serious flavor, and nice color, too.  I prefer to cook colorful foods.  I'm not alone in thinking that color means flavor, but those similar-thinking other people aren't always perceived by other human beings.  I couldn't find a decent starch, no potatoes, no rice, no bread, but I did find some baked beans.

After settling on baked beans for my starch, I thought about flavor profiles for a moment.  This pondering lead me back to the fridge, wherein I found hoisin sauce I thought this would go well because I think of hoisin as Asian molasses.  Baked beans and molasses shouldn't need an explanation, but some people aren't lucky enough to have experienced the majesty of baked beans so I will explain.  Baked beans are often cooked with molasses.  Two tablespoons later, the color was really blending.  Everything was well and evenly cooked, and the beans were about ready, too.

After putting the bowl of corn meal back in the fridge with the greased and now useless pan I had intended to use to cook the corn bread, I settled on a corn bread-free meal.  The milk was thoroughly unusable, either of the two cartons in the fridge, but you don't really need to hear more about that.

I threw both items into a bowl, and was surprised that I didn't need to work at eating.  Unlike my fried rice experiment a few weeks ago, this was surprisingly edible.  It was both flavorful, and mushy, both of which are great for ease of eating.  Kind of like baby food, but yummy.  The NotWife refused to even try it.  This didn't hurt my feelings, no it did not.  You can't prove anything.

This may just be baloney pie with vegetables, but it was still tasty.

What Happens After the Zoo Closes?

Weddings, apparently. I had the pleasure of assisting in the marriage of one of my brothers to a lovely woman, and now none of us need worry about him any longer. That's her job now, read the fine print, honey.

The ceremony took place in a portion of the African Savanna, near the zebras and giraffe habitats. Ideally, the peacocks were to have pranced about tails a-waving, and the zebras were supposed to graze peacefully behind the couple and the officiator while everyone gazed at the beautiful scene. Instead, we got twenty minutes of maribou storks, and twenty seconds of zebras. The peacocks stayed out of sight, and periodically screeched like a child without LEGOs, or a parent stepping on a LEGO. I'm told that the zookeepers refused to apply the cattle prods to coerce the animals into the pattern set by the wedding planner.

Maribou storks are not the prettiest birds in the world, rather more competitive in the ugliest birds in the world category, but are incidentally hilarious when standing behind your brother as he swears his vows. Someone took the bold move of ensuring that my other brothers and I could not look each other in the face, obviously assuming that we would spend the entire ceremony attempting to crack each other up. This is an important part of all wedding planning involving any men, especially the Brothers of Indeterminate Number since we seem to have made an informal and previously unmentioned tradition of throwing each other into Giggle Loops.

The storks tried their best at looking pretty, even putting on a little show and dance for the gathering crowd. This show stopped as soon as the wedding party took their assigned positions, and the storks, perhaps sensing that no one was looking at them anymore, went back to picking at their nits. I am undyingly grateful to them for having the good sense to avoid crapping during the service because that would have been cruel and unusual punishment for me. I would have burst into laughter, and then my severed head might have landed in their enclosure. To be promptly eaten by the carrion consuming storks.

The peacocks were no help at all. I do not exaggerate when I say that they sound like a man stepping on a LEGO. Scatter some LEGOs by Daddy's bathroom door in the middle of the night, and you will know exactly what a peacock sounds like. The sound of much grounding.

After the ceremony, we were allowed to feed and pet giraffes. I took the opportunity to size up the average reticulated giraffe for the possible consumption by fire in Snag's backyard. It pleases me to say that Snag's grill is more than adequate for the job, as if we thought it would be any different. I was not allowed to feed or punch a cheetah. I was, however, allowed to punch a tiger with a false perspective shot, but potato tomato.

In case you care, and I know you don't, giraffes do not have soft lips like a horse, cow, or emu. Giraffes have tough, rubbery lips, and require a serious duration marinade, and a serious duration low roasting. Snag is probably an expert at cooking these great beasts, and I've heard their necks are rather like osso buco, but the other way around.

One final note, Helob is still angry at me for my lack of effort. He wanted me to break into the temporary exhibit of tarantulas, and take some photos for him. I told him that was gross, and that he should leave me out of his sex life. Eat your crickets, Helob. They're well-fed, and loud.