brain dump 009 [early october]
365 portraits, up-and-coming nyc photographer bill wadman's one-a-day project. his shots are mostly of assorted new yorkers, though the occasional celebrity pops up - see 05 september (buzz aldrin) and 25 september (maggie!).
vegetarian shepherd's pie recipe. this required a bit of tweaking. we doubled the pie's filling but only used a single batch of mashed potatoes, so there was a layer on top rather than all the way 'round. we also threw in two large diced carrots and 2 tbsp fresh basil (instead of the dried), and simmered on high for 25 minutes rather than 15: 3 cups of wine (nearly a whole bottle) and 3 cups of vegetable stock (we used the better than boullion vegetable base) take a long time to cook down. result: two full pies (we made two so that joe could stir some ground beef into his version), awesome welcome-to-fall leftovers for a week. probably the best veg shepherd's pie i've ever had, and i know my potatoes and stew, internets.
silent majority, "citizens against car alarms." i'm not (yet?) prepared to outlaw the things, but i've been inspired to acquaint myself with the intricacies of new york noise laws. last night joe (politely) asked the guys at the car rental place down the street to, y'know, maybe do something about the alarms that have been sounding every 30 seconds almost every evening (they park rental cars up and down our block at night). their response: "but how else are we going to find the cars?" they hit the alarms on purpose instead of walking down the street, you see. i might hate them more than i hated the people who'd block our driveway (and our costly parking space) on purpose in san francisco; the jury's still out.
"you, bill clinton and a bowl of chips," on increasingly chatty (read: creepy) messages from democratic candidates. the blogger suggests that the "howdy" tone differentiates the notes from spam; "[obama's] campaign also cleverly put a “Re:” in front of another recent email, presumably to make recipients feel like they were already invested in the conversation." ah, but spammers started doing that years ago; "Re:" is automatically spam unless i recognize the sender. i did read and enjoy the clinton note, as it was amusing to see bill whore so officially (if you donate to hillary's campaign in the next while, you're eligible to win a date to watch one of the debates with him). then, this weekend, i got a note from john grisham (subject line: "Fwd: Carrots") about how he will also be my date, and oh, hillary says bill should be eating carrots rather than a bowl of chips. um, what? i feel like writing the campaign to let them know off-putting this stuff is, but knowing the wiles of the clinton team, i'm sure some demographic must be eating it up. still, james carville would never have stood for it.
i feel like writing the campaign to let them know off-putting etc etc
ReplyDeleteIt's this sort of thing that is making it verrry difficult for me to pick a horse to get behind.
(Also: the fact that none of the people currently in office (sit this one out, John) are willing to take a "screw you, George; you aren't getting past me" stand yet--which they totally could do if they had the guts. First guy / person named Hillary to do it, and make it stick (barring the improbable... sorry, Dennis), gets my vote and my district-walking feet. But that's another story.)
But the money thing? Jesus. Hillary's loaded. Barack? Loaded, with Oprah coming right in behind him for good measure. John Edwards just swore to the federal contribution limits, but the dude's rolling in real money of his own; he can self-finance if he really has to. The national/Senate/House Democrats are crushing the GOP in fundraising, so there'll be plenty of soft money flying around.
I might fork over a few bucks for a House candidate late in the game, but paying out now just seems to be, well, a waste. I dunno.
i love recipe-tweaking notes. so liberating. a "here's how i changed it which gives you permission to change it, too," approach is always the best. have i sent you my "eggplant-lasagna-but trader-joe's-didn't-have-lasgana-noodles-so-we-used-pappardelle-and-hey-shouldn't-this-have-zucchini-in-it?" recipe yet? delish.
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