Classic Dishes...



Cookie D’oh

If you can’t laugh at my misfortune, what can you laugh at, right?

So I decided I was gonna make chocolate chip cookies (Alton Brown’s The Chewy) tonight. Unwrapped a couple sticks of butter, dug out the saucepan I use for melting same (the last of my original cookware – the remainder was unceremoniously retired today in favor of new pots and pans which received a run through the dishwasher before being entered into service), and the usual plastic bowl I pre-sift the flour and baking soda into. Butter on the back burner, bowl on the front one (my counterspace is minimal at best), burner on, commence measuring flour. Hmm. Not much flour. Hope it’s enough. After a careful measure….ah, close enough! Rock and roll!

Sift sift sift. How’s the butter doing? Hm, still rock hard. Hey, something doesn’t look right. *peer* Dammit, that’s the wrong burner! Get that bowl the hell off of there!

….too late. The bottom had melted enough that I deposited the last two-plus cups of flour in the house directly onto the burner, along with a good bit of melted plastic.

Oh well. I was goin’ out to bring back some dinner anyhow. Now I can make a detour for a bag of flour on the way.

I Get Letters

From another good friend of mine, hdayejr@aol.com, I received the following missive:

(BTW, “The Invision Board” is the game-show board that I’ve mentioned I post to on a more-than-regular basis. Ol’ Harv-O was recently ejected for, well, being an idiot.)

THE INVISION BOARD IS GOING TO BE FUCKED UP YET TONIGHT(DESPITE WHAT YOU AND YOUR BITCH BOYFRIEND ZINKIN THINK) AND YOUR WEBPAGE IS PROBABLY NEXT. ANY THING I HACK AND GET, WILL NOT BE RETURNED TO THE PERSON IT BELONGS. IT BECOMES MY PROPERTY, SO FUCK YOU AND YOUR FAMILY TOO!!!!

“ANYTHING I HACK AND GET”? Doesn’t that sound like an open threat a 13-year-old HaX0R would make in a letter to 2600?

The way I see it, the day a chump (and that’s all he is, a little chump) like Harvey Daye can beat Comcast, that’s the day I don’t want ’em for my ISP anymore.

Somehow I have a feeling we’ll still be here in the morning.

We’re Well Aware

Seattle sports fans did me proud yesterday.

The Seahawks were tied with the Packers at 20 yesterday at the end of regulation of their NFC Wildcard playoff game, and Seattle won the coin toss for possession. And Seattle QB Matt Hasselbeck said, and I quote, “We went the ball, and we’re going to score!”

What he DIDN’T say was “Unless, of course, I throw a dumb-ass pass on 3rd and 11 that Al Harris picks off and runs back for a touchdown to win the game for the Packers.”

Now, one of the IRC channels I hang out on is #seattle, made up mostly of locals. And because the intelligence level of the average IRC denizen is right up there with, well, the average intelligence level of most of the country, any local channel whose sports team just lost an important game is usually flooded with idiots from The Other City come to brag about their perceived dominance.

And, lo, it was the same on this day. A few Packer fans (I refuse to believe a #greenbay exists, it would have been annexed by #milwaukee years ago) came in and bellowed the oh-so-intelligent analysis of “SEAHAWKS SUCK!” Never mind that the game went to overtime, or that Seattle never really should have been in the playoffs anyhow, only having won two road games. “SEAHAWKS SUCK!”

And nobody so much as blinked. “Yeah, tell us something we don’t know.” And it hit me: The last playoff game this team won was in 1983. Being told that the Seahawks suck is roughly akin to calling Out! Magazine and telling them to stop the presses for an emergency news item: Richard Simmons is gay!

So, good on the good people of #seattle, sports fans though they by and large may not be, for not feeding the trolls. Oh, and I wasn’t that heartbroken over the loss either. So even though I’ve only lived here for 5 years now, maybe I’m learning.