Katie Joseph’s Blog

A photo I took while visiting Julee made the “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks. This snowy January day just got a little brighter.

The animal most commonly perceived as having an attitude of permanent disapproval is the rabbit. Lagomorphs, however, do not have the cat’s ability to radiate disdain straight into one’s heart, often from rooms away. Boy George displays above the sagging whiskers of disdain, disapproval and disappointment. The dog gets this look a lot.

One of my advisors in college wisely told me, “More math will never hurt you.”  Even though they made me crazy, nearly ruined my GPA, and seemed to be taught by different versions of the same person, I’m glad I took all those stats classes.  While I don’t run chi-squared tests on a daily basis, I do have a pretty finely-honed bullsh*t detector.  Take, for example, data contained within the Mothman Prophecies:

I was in the mood for a little light reading, so I picked up this 1975 gem on unexplained phenomena. Perhaps it’s all the Penn & Teller I’ve watched, but whenever someone in a “woo-woo” field cracks out data, I just have to look under the hood.

I do give Keel credit for actually taking a crack at being scientific and keeping data. He seems reasonably objective and who knows how I’d think if faced with the Mothman itself. That said, relying on straight-up percentages can get you in trouble.

On page 144, he displays a table of distribution of UFO reports in 1950 and concludes, based on percentage of total observations, that UFOs are more likely to be reported on Wednesday than any other day of the week, since 18.8% of observations reported were on Wednesdays.

It’s been at least eight years since I’ve run any kind of statistical test, but I just couldn’t help myself. Wikipedia made un-sticking the gears a relatively painless procedure, and I was soon using Excel to run a chi-squared test (which I think was the right one to use).

Result: I reject Keel’s hypothesis and find that a UFO is no more likely to be reported on Wednesday than any other day of the week.

And that is why I only went on four dates in college.

A couple of days before Christmas, the mister and I headed over to the local grog & burger joint for dinner.  It’s right next to a Salvation Army and the lights were on, tantalizing me.  “There might be cashmere in there,” said my sense of false hope.

There was no cashmere, but there were ducks — many of them, and in formation no less.  It made me a bit uneasy.  No finds that night, either, other than this photo.

On an unrelated note, we’re loving this recipe (it’s comfort food weather, after all).

It did not work out as we had planned.

With all the talk of holiday stress and the economic meltdown, I wanted do a little something different when it came to Christmas cookies for my hen party gift exchange last week. Inspired by this artist, I decided that if I couldn’t bring actual happy pills to the party, I could at least make my cookies look like them:

Since Zoloft is sort of non-descript, I went with its cartoon mascot instead:

I also made some non-specific pill cookies that were frosted a solid color on one end with sprinkles on the other end (so they looked like capsules).

My attempt at antacid cookies (made multi-colored by adding food coloring to this recipe) was passable but the “T” (for Tums) stamped in them didn’t hold up during baking. The Xanax cookies were a complete flop in all respects but taste since I made them too small to handle any writing.  Hence, no photos of these.

Despite the above-noted mishaps, the cookies produced a big laugh when they were unveiled and were absolutely worth the time.

Note: Lest you imagine our household with candy dishes of pills on every end table, Google Images — not a personal stash — was my visual reference for this project.

The streets were icy on baking day, and between that and the holiday rush I had absolutely no desire to go to the store to get the proper tools.  A glass and a plastic cup (squeezed just so) served as cookie cutters, and I did the cut-out in the Valium cookies with a paring knife.

The frosting is a little sloppy because (a) it’s powdered sugar frosting, and (b) I was using a zip-top bag with a hole cut in it since I don’t have a proper pastry bag or tips.  I had so much fun doing this that I may invest in some decorating equipment.   The possiblities are endless.

Since the “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks has not yet gotten around to publishing my submissions, I present the following for your enjoyment:

Found in Mayflower, Arkansas.

Found at Wal-Mart

Teaching Amos this game has made grocery shopping so much more fun. It’s like a nerdy version of I Spy.

There are countless examples of one person or a small group of people ruining something cool for the rest of us.  Examples: Great White and pyrotechnics in small clubs, Richard Reid and keeping one’s shoes on in airports, comment/bb spammers and un-moderated internet forums.  The list goes on.

When I saw this video, I thought to myself, “Boy am I glad I saw Tsukiji before these jerks ruined it for everybody.”

I was actually surprised we could get in at all back in 2004.  It’s a fascinating place but also one where it is very easy to get underfoot.

There’s a dance to it — that’s the only way to move that much fish and all those people in a relatively small space, all before noon.  If you don’t know the steps or at least have the sense to stay out of the way, you may be taken out by a Mighty Car at worst, or severely irritate people who are trying to make their living.

These guys probably aren’t the first drunken tourists to show up there.  The action starts between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m., when truly dedicated drinkers start feeling the need for a change of pace.  Perhaps a memo has been circulated to Tokyo’s taxi drivers: If your passengers are drunk tourists demanding to go to the fish market, politely feign ignorance and drop them off at their hotel.  The tuna will thank you.

Let’s see if this completely borks WordPress:

chili.php

<?

$bacon = a few slices chopped;
$onion = one chopped;
$hamburger = one pound;
$mushrooms = one package portabella steak-sliced chopped OR three portabella  caps chopped;
$garlic = two to four cloves, minced;
$beans = two cans;
$tomatoes = one big can, diced;
$tomato_juice = about half of one big can;
$wine=cheap red;
$spices = array (cumin, chili powder, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg);

// $spices can vary; sometimes I add cayenne pepper to the array.

$domestic_lager = cheap beer of your choice;
$taste=0;
$optimum_tasty=smokygoodness;
$garnish = array (fritos, sour cream, cheese);

function bacon_veggies ($bacon, $onion, $mushrooms) {

saute $bacon in dutch oven;

WHEN ($bacon renders enough grease) {
add $onions;
}

WHEN ($onions start to brown) {
add $mushrooms;
allow $mushrooms to absorb $bacon goodness;
add $garlic;
saute $ garlic until barely colored;
add $hamburger;
brown $hamburger;
}

return $bacon_veggies_done;
}

bacon_veggies ($bacon, $onion, $mushrooms);

function redwinereduction ($red_wine, $spices[3,4,5]) {

add $wine to saucepan;
add $spices[3, 4, 5] to saucepan;
simmer and reduce by half;
return $reduction;
}

IF ($bacon_veggies_done) {

redwinereduction ($red_wine, $spices[3,4,5])

add $beans to dutch oven;
add $tomatoes to dutch oven;
add $tomato_juice to dutch oven;
leftover $tomato_juice + $domestic_lager = $red_beer;
drink $red_beer;

}

// Don’t leave $red_beer out. It’s not chili without $red_beer.

function $spicing ($spices[]){

add $spices[1, 2] to taste;
allow to simmer for five minutes;
$taste;
If ($taste == satisfactory;) {
return $spicing_done}
ELSE {add more $spices[1,2];
$taste++ }
return $taste, $spicingdone;
}

$spicing ($spices [1,2]);

IF ($spicingdone) {

IF ($taste = delicious) {

add $reduction; } ELSE {
simmer 20 more minutes;
$taste++;
}

WHEN $taste == $optimumtasty {

serve with $garnish [];
enjoy with more $red_beer;
}

}

?>

One of Amos’s newer hobbies is beer-brewing.  Actually, “hobby” may not be the right word here.  For Amos, hobbies are not casual pursuits, but take on shades of obsession.  When he got interested in electronics, a kit here and there wasn’t enough to satisfy.  He had to make his own circuit boards, modular synthesizers, and eventually design his own projects.  When he rediscovered arcade games, he didn’t just load up an emulator on our entertainment PC, he got a cocktail-style cabinet and filled it with its own computer and an actual honest-to-Pete arcade monitor.  He’d mentioned wanting to brew beer in the past, so it didn’t surprise me that when he took it up, it wasn’t with a casual Mr. Beer kit.  He found the country’s best home brew supplier (free instructional DVDs!), ordered up one of their nicer kits and almost immediately started scheming for a kegerator.

If my count is right, this will be his fourth batch of beer.  Since a watched wort never boils, he’s enjoying some Buffy the Vampire Slayer on his laptop (headphones necessary due to the noise of the kitchen fan.) His first batch is on the cusp of being ready for consumption; the sample I had on Wednesday night was delightful if a bit under-carbonated.

I fully support this hobby and not just as a loving spouse.  I do enjoy our project nights (making our own tonic and bottling beer being two recent examples), but the real reason for my enthusiasm is that homebrewing produces a microbrew-quality product at a Pabst Blue Ribbon price.   I don’t even mind the mildly Vegemite-y smell it produces, or sharing my kitchen workspace with Amos.

In other news, hosting Thanksgiving was a success thanks to lots of help and advice from my friend Neal.  The man peeled ten pounds of potatoes and probably half as many carrots for me on Wednesday night and loaned me a wide assortment of Star-Trek-weapon-like specialty utensils.  We had a total of fourteen people over including four adorable kids ranging from a couple of months to five years old.  The cats are only now recovering.  Between you and me, Internet, I love it when my  house is full of warm and fuzzy chaos.