Behind The Laughter

So here’s the recipe from a thai cooking class I took. Its awesome and simple.

coconut milk, 1 large can
green curry paste, 4 oz (1 small can) or to taste
tofu/meat/fish
veggies (squash, bamboo shoots, eggplant, sweet potatoes whatever you have on hand)
Fish sauce
thai basil

DO NOT SHAKE THE COCONUT!! If you did shake the can, put it in the fridge and let it sit for 1 hr or so. What you want is the cream on top to begin with.
Scoop that top part into a saucepan (the Thais call that the head of the coconut milk. You can tell when you start to reach the less dense ‘tail’).
Mix the green curry paste into the saucepan and cook this mixture till it becomes fragrant and the coconut starts to ‘break’ a bit (the texture looks cracked and some oil is exuded).
Add the vegetables and a can of water to the saucepan, bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer.
You can add more water if you need during the cooking process.
You would add meat, tofu or shrimp at this point. Once the vegetables are cooked, add fish sauce to taste. This is where all the salt in the dish is going to come from. Let it simmer for another 5 mins or so, so that the flavours have a chance to meld. Fish would be added at this point because it won’t take more than 5-10 mins to cook. Add the thai basil and turn it off.

That’s it. Serve with rice. Enjoy.

Notes: The right fish sauce here is key. I bought the oyster brand fish sauce but there’s a healthy boy brand that’s pretty good too. The oyster brand is less salty but each one tastes distinct and is quite tasty.

I had the luxury of watching Glenn Beck this morning on CNN.  Well, not so much “luxury” as much as “unfortunate experience”, but I digress.

Ye olde Beck was discussing the merits of The Dark Knight (yea!) and how it was a direct parallel to the War On Terror (noo!). You see, Glenn was extolling the virtues of Batman’s “whatever it takes to stop evil” attitude and his contentment with being the villain for the sake of the greater good, and how it was very much like George W. Bush’s actions during the Global Struggle Against Radical Extremism. But alas Glenn, these are not the same things.

Let me count the ways:

1. The Dark Knight is a movie. When Batman breaks the law, he breaks a movie law. When Batman spies on people, he is spying on movie people. Get it?  It is fake. Unlike in the real world, where Mr. Bush positions mis-information to the People of the United States and makes a fake case for a war with Iraq and where Mr. Bush allows warrant-less wiretapping of United States Citizens that hasn’t yielded any useful information.  Hmm, not seeing a parallel.
2. Batman has a long and storied past.  I mean, c’mon, he was “born” in May 1939.  Batman has a well-known history of fighting crime on the streets of Gotham City and has occasionally “crossed the line” between right and wrong in order to stop criminals.  The earliest examples of this are way back in 1988 during Batman: The Killing Joke and A Death In The Family (where Robin II dies at the hands of the Joker).  Using “new” math, I deduced that 1988 came well before 2001 (when the War On Terror was, at least publicly, conceived).
3. If I understand the movie correctly and draw the supposed parallels that Glenn (Frey, The Heat Is On) Beck eludes to, Batman is George Walker Bush and the Joker is “The Terrorists”.  Ok, let’s go with that.  Well, then I have to give some props to Batman for identifying the actual villain and apprehending him.  Contrast that to the real story of Mr. Bush’s failed attempt at going after Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq (which had none) and, in seven years since the War On Terror began, failed to apprehend anything.  Though, I will give him credit for ousting Saddam Hussein, destabilizing Iraq, indirectly making Iran a player of greater importance and creating more terrorist organizations wanting to bring harm to the US.  Well done Batman; not so much President Bush.
4. I’m sure there are more things I could say here, but honestly, I’m getting too worked up to continue.

Finally, I must say, shame on you CNN.  You are the Cable News Network.  Not the Cable Opinion Network, a la Fox, and I use the term loosely, News.  If you are going to air editorial opinionated material, then preface it as such.  And to you Mr. Beck, don’t ruin my favorite modern-day superhero movie (sorry Batman, Superman II will always be #1 in my heart) by comparing it to a failed political agenda almost 8 years in the making.

First, I must give credit where credit is due. If not for Gayatri obsessively listening to Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me, I would never have known and never realized one of my true dreams.

What’s the true dream I am speaking of? Why its Carl Kassell’s voice on my voicemail message!

Many weeks back, I submitted my request to be a contestant on the show and lo and behold it finally happened. I was the first contestant and played the game “Who’s Carl This Time?” where Carl reads three quotes and I have to identify the speaker or related news story.

Besides the fact that I sounded like a complete and utter goober (no really, I did; it was kind of pathetic) I was successful in identifying all three quotes correctly!

Shortly, I should be receiving a call from the Wait Wait staff where they’ll provide me information on how to claim my über-prize!

If you want to know when it will be playing in your area (all 5 of you that read this blog, that is) check the NPR schedule thing.

One public radio goal down, one to go. Yeah, that’s right. I desperately yearn to be a guest commentator on Marketplace.

A couple of weeks ago, my Jetta and I hit a major milestone. We celebrated 6 years together and 70,000 miles worth of earth-destroying emissions. Huzzah!

How did we celebrate? Well, my stupid car’s sun roof opened automatically (a common occurrence of late) and I suddenly realized that I wanted to share my love with another vehicle. My love is not for another four-wheeled death machine; instead, I’m saving myself for a two-wheeled mode of transportation.

Motorcycle? Nope. Scooter? Yes!

I’m down to two choices, the Schwinn Newport 150

or the Genuine Scooter Buddy

Why a scooter, you ask? Well, I will tell you.

Scooters appear to be more efficient with the use of the foreign oil, to the tune of approx. 70-80 miles per gallon. That’s a lot of miles. Compare that to my Jetta which gets, on a good day, 26 or 27 miles per gallon. The cost savings over my car alone makes this worth considering.

However, in all truthiness, I really want a scooter to infiltrate the hipster culture that so many of my generation belong to. I mean, I don’t want to be a hipster myself. Nothing like that. I just want to understand them. In order to understand them, I must immerse myself in their culture. Yeah, that’s it.

(Inspired by apartment therapy’s post about the same topic)

Most of these may include the cat but here goes anyway:

- The cat sighing as he settles in for a nap
- The cat’s eerily human questioning meow when he wakes up and isn’t sure where we are
- Rain/stream (any kind of water really)
- The sound the wind makes when you’re out on a particularly windy day
- National Geographic theme
- Beep of the lock on Sandeep’s car when he gets home
- The sound of the bangles on my mom’s wrists (as a kid I remember hearing them before she came into a room)
- Uncontrolled giggles as well as real belly rumbling laughter (esp. if ending in a snort)

Last class weekend of the semester? Check.

Paper and homeworks finished? Check.

Not paying attention in class? Check.

Thrilled that I’m sitting in class on my birthday? Check.

Yep, turned 29 today. One year until the big 3-0.

Usually, when my birthday hits I take a few minutes to consider my mortality. I mean, this is one more year I’ve been lucky enough to avoid…

• getting struck by lightning
• getting hit by a falling anvil
• drowning in the bath tub
• floating into space by virtue of holding too many helium balloons and thereby suffocating due to a lack of oxygen

Well, no more. No more worrying about death; no more being concerned with departing the land of the living. Time to take a stand.

I have decided to embrace, not fight, the advance of technology in the modern world, and begin the process of personal cyborgization. Yeah dude, its a word, Wikipedia says so (citation needed).

This is by no means an inexpensive venture; in fact, this would put us in significant debt. So how do I reach immortality without entering bankruptcy? One word: ads.

By partnering with the largest ad network on the planet, Google AdSense (copyright 2008, Google, Inc.) I will be able to subsidize the cost of my cybernetic enhancements and, using the parlance of our times, actualize a paradigm shift in the business of immortality.

This process has not yet begun, but rest assured I shall see it through to completion. You’ll know that it worked when I outlive everyone else on this god-forsaken planet.

The following is an artist’s rendition of my projected cyborgified appearance*:

—-
* - note, I did this myself, therefore it is more of an amateur’s rendition.

Big ups to Ecology action.
They accept all manner of plastics as long as it has a number on it, not just 1 and 2 like the city does (don’t even get me started on the dumb ‘neck must be smaller than the jar body’ requirement). They even accepted a saucepan that had the nonstick coating pealing.

what does that mean for us? We can recycle those nalgene bottles instead of having to throw them away.

A big fuck you to the Dow corporation!

I was reading something and came across an ad for Dow. Now these ads about the ‘human element’ has been playing for a while on NatGeo and while I scream at the tv every time it comes on, this ad really messed me up:

The story is called the Bhopal disaster and you can read about it here at amnesty and at wikipedia

So dow, since green is the flavour of the moment, you’re going to advertise the ‘good’ you do around the globe. What happens when corporate ethics become the issue du jour?

This Week In Hate is proud to have the distinguished gentleman from Arizona, the honorable John McCain, joining us.

Let’s get started, shall we?

There are no words to describe McCain’s latest stupid-as-shit-comments regarding the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

I’ll let Think Progress sum it all up for me:

Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) skipped the vote on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which “restores the longstanding interpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act,” overturned last year by a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling. In New Orleans today, McCain explained his opposition to the bill by claiming it “opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems.” He added that instead of legislation allowing women to fight for equal pay, they simply need “education and training“

Ummm. This is a pretty egregious statement about his views on women.

I’m floored that anyone in this day and age still thinks like this? What year does he think it is? 1950? Talk about being out of touch. Sheesh.

Minus the chorus…

The green plastic watering can
For a fake chinese rubberplant
In the fake plastic earth
That she bought from a rubber man
In a town full of rubber plans
To get rid of itself

She lives with a broken man
A cracked polystyrene man
Who just crumbles and burns
He used to do surgery for girls in the eighties
But gravity always wins

She looks like the real thing
She tastes like the real thing
My fake plastic love
But I can’t help the feeling
I could blow through the ceiling
if I just turned and ran