I have preview duty tonight….and it is quite easy. Why? We don’t have a lot of material in the pipeline. *hint, hint* I’d sure like to have more stuff to edit…
However, we do have a couple of things lined up:
Monday, Animal writes of…animals. He really has been a stalwart these past few months. *sets out large tub of berry jam for our author-bear to scarf down*
Tuesday, MLW continues to slog through the new, woke Charmed for us. Trust me, this next one is a doozy. She really is doing rough duty watching that dreck, and distilling it down for us.
Wednesday, We expect SugarFree will tormenthaunttwist regale us with more adventures of The Hat and The Hair (and tha’ Hat). I have managed to get over my disappointment at the intrepid pair not finding Gerry Ford’s Gold.
Thursday, EMPTY. If nobody steps up, you will probably get stuck with me updating Catalonia and Afghanistan events. An nobody wants to settle for that.
Friday, EMPTY. I shan’t be stepping up to do anything on Good Friday….so consider this an additional plea for your submissions.
Weekend – We have been VERY lucky to have Not Adahn, OMWC and Mexican Sharpshooter carrying the load. Occasional contributions from our cryptid … friends too.
I leave the comments for you to bounce ideas around and OT the living daylights out of this.
The new feature in the sky is Jupiter going retrograde. So government is going to be even worse — more incompetent and more abusive — than usual. Of course this is only temporary until *traces line with finger holds up ruler* Holy fuck, August 11? Well shit. This is another reason why less government is a good idea; it minimizes the effects of Jupiter Retrograde.
Jupiter Retrograde plays a part in this week’s alignments, being aligned with the Earth and the Moon yielding a nominal value of “disruptive misrule at home.” Unfortunately, this is also in a lunar resonance with a second alignment with Mercury and Venus. That secondary one ordinarily would mean a good chance for a random hookup, but in this case indicates that you are going to do something stupid and nookie will be withheld as a result. I hope your couch is comfortable.
Aries continues to be in the lead. The natural order is maintained, but nothing terribly special
Pisces, on the other hand, is having a surge rebound from the shitty month they had in March, with a particularly auspicious arrangement of Mercury and Venus. Yes, that same one as above, but in this context is leaning very heavily in the “short term interactions yield good results” direction.
Mars in Gemini continues the internecine strife.
The moon in Leo is not a terribly good sign. I mean it’s not bad, but there’s the whole fire/water conflict and whatnot. I think in this case, since it’s occurring during a time of Jupiter retrograde, it indicates a further undermining of leadership/authority.
If you’re a good person, this is bad; if you’re a bad person, this is good: Jupiter going retrograde in Sagittarius indicates that karma is going to miss its target. It also portends badly for my trip to the range.
This week’s card draw lead off with one with zodiacal symbols on it, indicating a particular accuracy for this week. Which is unfortunate.
Aries: 9 of Swords – Despair, grief, mourning.
Taurus: 7 of Coins, reversed – Anxiety about money
Gemini: 4 of Coins, reversed – Suspense, delay, opposition
Leo: Strength – Booya!
Virgo: King of Coins – Valor, realizing intelligence, success in mathematical and intellectual endeavors
Libra: 8 or Wands, reversed – Jealousy, quarrels, stingings of conscience.
Scorpio: The Hermit – Prudence, roguery, corruption, treason
Sagittarius: 9 of Coins, reversed – Roguery, deception, voided project, bad faith
Having gotten it out of my system yesterday, I’ll revert to my usual mildly coherent and highly grumpy self for links today. Starting with birthdays (you assholes disappointed me yesterday by not making comments about Dong-Dong): erstwhile-babe Julie Christie; up-and-coming quarterback Baker Mayfield; Deep Purple monster guitarist Ritchie Blackmore; and Nobel-winning chemist and nudist Alan MacDiarmid.
Old Guy Music is an extended one, a whole album, and though it’s nominally Charlie Christian, this might be the most remarkable assembly of jazz talent ever. So it’s worth hearing the whole thing.
My oldest son asked to try his hand at baseball about a month or so ago. He’s a bit awkward with a lot of the fundamentals but he’s new at it. I was never great at it either, so I was surprised when the coach asked me to assist. The other day one of the other players asked me a question: ”What does your shirt say?”
”It says, This shirt is made from four plastic bottles.” It was a souvenir I bought at Coca-Cola World in Atlanta in the 50% off bin that I thought was a fun conversation piece. The polyethylene (PET) that made up the Coke bottles was simply repurposed for polyester. It was and is in essence, a regular t-shirt.
This is my review of Dark Horse Pinot Grigio.
Recycling has been in the news recently. The bottom line up front is that nobody is willing to purchase garbage anymore. When local municipalities offer recycling services, like my hometown of Phoenix, they simply have the homeowner separate “recyclables” from bulk trash as a first step. Then a contractor sorts it further and “disposes” of it. What they were actually doing of course, was turning garbage into gold:
Recycling is the globe’s bizarro commodity, created by the richest people on Earth and sold to the developing world. Like all commodities, its price reflects a staggering string of interconnected happenings. Your 2011-era empty Coke bottle wasn’t just worth a lot because of high oil prices—it was worth a lot because Pakistan had suffered devastating monsoons in the summer of 2010. Flooding in the Indus River was one of a cascading series of events that sent cotton, in April 2011, to its highest nominal price since records began in 1870. Jeans were going to be more expensive, Levi’s announced. And so, it turned out, was recycled PET plastic, because for Chinese manufacturers of articles like teddy bears and blue jeans, polyester fibers made from old plastic bottles were a cost-effective replacement for cotton. Cotton was up; plastic was up; recycled PET prices went up. As when cotton hit its previous high price in 1995, the scramble was on for old bottles. Which you, American reader, the world’s leading consumer of soda and bottled water, had in spades.
That is until 2017, when China announced it is no longer purchasing the world’s trash. So where have all the empty bottles gone?
Nowhere. Some cities burn it, some put it quietly in landfills, but mostly it is all just piling up.
As the trash piles up, American cities are scrambling to figure out what to do with everything they had previously sent to China. But few businesses want it domestically, for one very big reason: Despite all those advertising campaigns, Americans are terrible at recycling.
About 25 percent of what ends up in the blue bins is contaminated, according to the National Waste & Recycling Association. For decades, we’ve been throwing just about whatever we wanted—wire hangers and pizza boxes and ketchup bottles and yogurt containers—into the bin and sending it to China, where low-paid workers sorted through it and cleaned it up. That’s no longer an option. And in the United States, at least, it rarely makes sense to employ people to sort through our recycling so that it can be made into new material, because virgin plastics and paper are still cheaper in comparison.
Which begs the question, if China never bought the sorted trash in the first place, would recycling ever be a viable endeavor?
I of course do not have an easy answer as to what to do with this. If I did I wouldn’t be here, I’d be off getting filthy rich. Chances are pretty good somebody will figure something out now that there is an incentive to do so. In the meantime if you want to recycle because it makes you feel good…okay go for it. Otherwise a good way to find out if there is a market for you trash is to put it in front of your house like you would an old couch. Put a sign that says, “free” on it and see if its there the next day.
Need cans for cash, cash for alcohol research
Chances are pretty good a homeless guy knows exactly what will still fetch a few pennies for recycling, and will happily take it off your hands.
I bought canned wine with the intention of aggravating OMWC, but that didn’t work. I’m going to have to make a quesadilla with some Manchego to do that. The wine in a can is fruity, crisp, and has the ever so slight aftertaste of the epoxy liner to keep the wine from reacting with the 100% recyclable aluminum can.
Tendencies for explication will subordinate to fragility. That is, your cat’s beam is cloistered with pine-cones. Could someone sublime the aristocratic linen?
After some discussion here at Glib’s HQ, we decided to let the cryptids sort out who would do tonight’s advice column. As they could not agree, they decided to split it three ways. One bit of advice from each… we salute this solution, and the sharing of the article. If not, we feared a struggle that might have damaged the place even more than the takeover last month. So, with that behind us, enjoy the advice! First up, ZARDOZ:
THE GIFT OF ADVICE, FOR THE CHOSEN ONES.
ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN ONES. ZARDOZ HAS SELECTED THE BRUTAL “DEAR ABBY” TO DEFEAT IN ADVICE GIVING. THEREFOR, RECEIVE THE GIFT OF ADVICE!
Q: My husband likes to wear my underwear, and it grosses me out. He knows I don’t approve and promises he won’t do it again, but he does. I can’t even stand to look at him. What should I do? — DISTURBED IN TEXAS
A: IT IS FORTUNATE FOR YOU, BRUTAL, THAT ZARDOZ HAS COME ACROSS THIS BEFORE:
ZARDOZ WARNS, YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE THE GARTER!
DO NOT WORRY, IT WAS SIMPLY A PHASE, AND ZED GOT OVER IT…
UM…
SAY, IS THAT AN ETERNAL WAVING TO US OVER THERE? *FLIES FROM ROOM*
ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN.
… OK. Well, that was different. On to the next advice giver, our own STEVE SMITH:
DR. SMITH GIVE ADVICE NOW!
STEVE SMITH LAUGH AT SILLY PRUDENCE!
STEVE SMITH HERE, GIVE GOODEST ADVICE! HIM SMART AND KNOW HOW SOLVE PROBLEM. USUALLY INVOLVE RAPING PROBLEM UNTIL GO AWAY. BUT HIM TRY GIVE ADVICE TO SILLY HOOMANS. AT LEAST DO BETTER DEAR PRUDENCE!
Q:I’ve been arguing with my boyfriend of a year over the state of his bathroom since we’ve been dating. I’m grossed out by it. He doesn’t seem to mind that there are always beard trimmings on the surfaces where I like to put my makeup on in the morning, a floor I can’t step on with bare feet, and stray pubic hairs and stains in the toilet. He argues that he’s not the only one who uses that bathroom and his roommate is the main cause of the mess. I don’t doubt this because my boyfriend’s room is always clean, and the rest of the house isn’t too bad either, but his roommate is like a tornado. My boyfriend doesn’t want to be the one cleaning up someone else’s mess, which I get. I also understand that it’s a dingy old house, so to some extent it will never be truly clean. But that doesn’t change the fact that someone should be cleaning the bathroom at least, say, once a month.
This has been at a stalemate for a while now. He’ll say I barely spend the night at his place (which is true), and I’ll ask when the last time he cleaned the bathroom was, and he’ll just roll his eyes. I’m seriously considering just not coming over to his place until he does it. I’ve threatened that before but never really followed through. We’re both fed up with this situation.
—Dirty Bathroom
A: STEVE SMITH UNDERSTAND. HIM LIKE KEEP CAVE CLEAN. HIM GO IN WOODS, NO IN CAVE! TRY TELL ROOMMATE GO OUTSIDE AND BE DIRTY. IF HIM NO AGREE, THERE THREE THINGS CAN DO; 1) HIT ROOMMATE ON HEAD WITH BIG ROCK.
YOU CLEAN ROOM NOW?!
2) HAVE STEVE SMITH COME ASK POLITE, “PLEASE CLEAN”. BY ASK POLITE, MEAN RAPE.
3) HIRE CLEAN SERVICE. STEVE SMITH KNOW GOOD ONE.
HELP WITH LAUNDRY!
HOPE ADVICE HELP!
FREE CASCADIA!
Uhhh, yeah. Thanks for that great advice, STEVE. That leaves us with our last advice, from SEA SMITH:
SEA SMITH SPRAY WASH!
DEAR DEIDRE
SEA SMITH WANT HELP ADVICE! HE GOOD GIVER ADVICE. HE CHOOSE SILLY LAND HOOMAN ADVICE “DEAR DEIDRE“.
Q:I CAUGHT my girlfriend having sex in the bar loos with a guy she had only just met. Should I even try to get over this or is she just a cheap slut? I am 25 and my girlfriend is 24. We have been together for two years. I took her to Amsterdam recently for her birthday. We went to a bar the second evening and we were having a great time. My girlfriend said we should take it in turns to go to the toilet and if we went outside for a smoke, just in case we had our drinks spiked, which seemed to make sense. We got into company later that evening with a table of young men. My girlfriend was very chatty with the guy who was sitting beside her. I went to the toilet and when I came back to our table said I was going outside for a cigarette. While I was outside I looked back through the window at her. She saw me and looked annoyed so I walked out of sight for around five minutes. When I returned to the table, she had disappeared and so had the guy she had been talking to. I was a bit suspicious so I went to the toilets – unisex – and started checking the cubicles. I was really quiet. I heard noises from inside one. It was just movements, no conversation or any other sounds. I waited about three minutes and then pulled the door handle. The door flew open and there was my girlfriend inside with the guy she’d been chatting to. He was up against the wall and she was in front of him. She pulled her jeans up from both sides and panicked when she saw me. I swore at her and ran off in temper. She ran after me yelling and angry. Now she is telling me she has no memory of that evening and has sworn to me she loves me and would not have done it if she’d been in her right mind.
I love her and I don’t know what to think.
A: IT HURT! NOT YOU PROBLEM, SEA SMITH SIDES FROM LAUGH SO MUCH! OW, OW, OW!
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
HER SOUND SO EASY, NOT EVEN SEA SMITH WOULD RAPE. SEA SMITH HAVE SOME STANDARD! ONLY PART YOU SAY MAKE SENSE “I don’t know what to think”. SEA SMITH NOT SURE SILLY LAND HOOMAN CAN THINK. SEA SMITH SAY SWIM, SWIM AWAY FAST AS CAN. IF DO NOT, THEN FIND HER SPAWN WITH OTHER LAND HOOMANS MORE.
Buenos Tardes! Brett is currently partying down with a buddy. More details on that at his leisure….
Julian Assange is not the only one arrested for being affiliated with Julian Assange.
Interior Minister María Paula Romo did not name the man but said he had been arrested for “investigative purposes”.
An unnamed government official told the Associated Press that the man is Ola Bini, a Swedish software developer.
It comes just hours after Assange was himself arrested at the Ecuadorean embassy in London.
“A person close to Wikileaks, who has been residing in Ecuador, was arrested this afternoon when he was preparing to travel to Japan,” Ecuador’s interior ministry tweeted late on Thursday.
Senior Trump administration officials said they were rescinding an Obama-era decision that deemed Cuba’s baseball league to be separate from the Cuban government. The U.S. economic embargo on Cuba prohibits Americans from doing business with Cuba’s government, so the Obama administration’s ruling had cleared the way for an agreement between MLB and the Cuban Baseball Federation reached late last year
[…]
Under the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba passed by Congress decades ago, the administration has discretion to decide whether an entity like the Cuban Baseball Federation is too closely aligned with the government — in this case Cuba’s sports ministry — to be considered independent. Senior Trump administration officials said they couldn’t understand why the Obama administration had deemed the federation to be independent, calling it “an entity of the Cuban government.”
But former Obama administration officials said the goal of the policy had been to enable Cuban players to join U.S. teams without having to defect to the United States, which often involved dangerous journeys at the hands of human smugglers. Players would often pay to be smuggled into a third-party country from which they could join MLB.
President Trump’s call to cut aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras is raising concerns among lawmakers and national security and development experts, who say cutting aid will exacerbate the migrant crisis that is already crippling U.S. resources at the Southern border.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Agency for International Development told NPR on Tuesday that the agency is carrying out the president’s order to end foreign assistance programs for the Northern Triangle, the area that comprises those three Central American nations. The spokesperson said the agency is still finalizing the allocation of funds for 2019.
Trump has blamed the Central American countries for sending migrant caravans through Mexico to the U.S. border, an idea Trump has repeatedly promoted to raise the alarm about illegal immigration. In tweets on Saturday, Trump also returned to his previous threat to completely seal off the Southern border, blaming Democrats and Mexico for the turmoil at the border.
I suppose its better than a Ma-Duece.
Hi Preet.In some parts of the world, they call this “moonshine.”
For those that answered on whether or not I should shoot something yesterday, I tried in the morning, but somebody decided they wanted to shoot tracers at the outdoor range that backs a mountain. Naturally the mountain caught fire and I had to leave, lest I lob 5.56 NATO at a bunch of firefighters. I hate shooting the carbine indoors but…
For those of you that will not click any links at all, I will just leave a picture of this item I found at a local grocery store….for your…whatever.
The Irish look at us celebrating St. Patrick’s Day and just shake their heads. And they sure don’t gorge on corned beef. Well, screw ’em.
I had a small brisket in the deep freeze, so I separated the point from the flat and cured them separately.
Corned beef did originate in Ireland but the history is complicated. “Corn” referred to the large grain salt the meat was preserved in. This was well before refrigeration and preserving meat in salt was a standard practice throughout the world. This is a pretty entertaining read on the history of salt.
Most modern corned beef is wet cured in a brine solution but having done it both ways, I like the texture that results from dry curing. It also takes much less space.
Okay, as we discussed with bacon, the amount of cure is critical to developing a safe product. I weighed out my two pieces and plugged them into the cure calculator on the Digging Dog Farm website.
Next up are the seasonings:
3tbsp black pepper
1.5tbsp ground coriander
.75tsp mustard powder
.75tbsp brown sugar
1.5tsp garlic powder
1.5tsp onion powder
Pepper and coriander were toasted and ground up. All the ingredients were combined, split in half and blended with the cure for each cut of beef. A note on quantities, this is roughly based on the weight of the meat. You can be creative here and do what you want. There are plenty of spice recipes out there on the Interwebs.
Ziplock bags will work just fine for the curing process, but I find vacuum sealing works slightly better and the vacuum gives better penetration of the cure and seasonings.
Each piece of meat is put in a bag and half the cure mixture is poured in on each side. *euphemism alert* You need to massage your meat well to get the rub evenly distributed. Seal the bag, getting as much air out as you can, if you’re using a Ziplock bag, mark with the date and toss it in the fridge. Flip it every couple of days and give it a little massage. I let mine go two weeks.
When we reach the day of reckoning, remove the meat from the bags, rinse them well, trying to get as much of the rub off as possible. There will still be some leftover. Slice off a small piece and do a fry test. You’re looking for flavor and salt level. Any off odors or flavors, out it goes. If you’re going to continue on to pastrami and the fry test is too salty, you can soak it overnight in cold water. Dry the meat and toss in the fridge on a rack overnight.
I decided to turn the flat into pastrami. After it had dried overnight, I rubbed it with a bit of whiskey, and then coated it with equal amounts of coarse ground black pepper and coriander. Then into the smoker at 240 on cherry, until it reaches an internal temperature of 200-205.
For the point on St. Patty’s Day, I like to braise in Guinness. Any dark beer will work but, hey. Time depends on the size of the cut, I believe this small piece took 2 – 2 1/2 hours.
Now the style points. You could easily pull it, let it rest why you cook your vegetables, or you could go an extra step. I like to take some of the braising liquid, add a touch of honey and mustard, and cook it down to a glaze. The meat goes into a roasting pan and gets glazed several times over 20 minutes while in a 350 degree oven while the vegetables cook. Trust me, it’s worth it. Just make sure to adjust the sweetness in the glaze, if necessary before using it.
Slice and serve with your favorite Irish beverage of the day.
A so-so lift in the gym, a few aches, but nothing dramatic. The coffee station is a wreck and nobody in the office bothers to reload the supplies. Feh. I’d get worked up or angry, but I cannot be bothered this morning. Lucky for the commentariat, I can still go through the motions and bring you Links…
Why can’t we be more like Europe? I guess Seattle, Portland and San Francisco are on the way. Not that it matters.
Free healthcare providing Cubans kidnapped by libertarians! See if you can spot the weirdly specific detail in the story. Or not, I don’t care one way or the other.
Illinois politician spews lies…er, gives interview. I guess I should care that my taxes are going to go up, but I have resigned myself to it a while back, because, Illinois.
Anyone remember that old 1980s song “I Love LA“? I wonder if this would change some minds? Ah, who cares.
Let’s start off with a 
Buenos Tardes! Brett is currently partying down with a buddy. More details on that at his leisure….
