Yeah, I know, I still haven't done a full write up of my Chicagoland adventure yet.

Even lamer, I never wrote anything about Seattle either.

Who says USENET is dead? There's gold in this here thread, and its only a few months old.

Choice quote: "This thinking is what has killed modern jazz."

I've blogged this before, but this looks like it might be a better collection.

In 1989 the American musicologist Alan W. Pollack started to analyze the songs of the Beatles. He published his first results on internet. In 1991 — after he had finished the work on 28 songs — he bravely decided to do the whole lot of them. About ten years later, in 2000 he completed the analysis of the official Beatles' canon, consisting of 187 songs and 25 covers.

The only thing Toshiba really knows how to make is hard drives.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

I need to figure out how to make it so that no matter what program I am using, CTRL+T brings Firefox into the foreground and opens a new tab.

1 cup kosher salt
1 cup sugar
4 chicken bouillon cubes
approx 1.5 gallons water

Heat and stir until everything dissolves cleanly.
Let brine cool completely before soaking turkey.

.. my grill, Samuel Adams, and I.

One of the things you learn when you burn stuff on a regular basis, is that a lot of the pleasing aromas smells that the you of ten years ago thought were specifically caused by burning marijuaXXXXXXna (censoored, but you can figure it out), can actually be had just by burning some wood.

Invaluable information on this day...

The Food Safety and Inspection Service announced a change in the "Single Minimum Internal Temperature Established for Cooked Poultry". The new cooking recommendation is as follows:

"A whole turkey (and turkey parts) is safe when cooked to a minimum internal temperature of 165°F as measured with a food thermometer. Check the internal temperature in the innermost part of the thigh and wing and the thickest part of the breast. For reasons of personal preference, consumers may choose to cook turkey to higher temperatures."

This new cooking temperature is a change from previous 180°F for a whole turkey and 170°F for turkey breast. The single minimum internal temperature change to 165°F was recommended by the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF) in a press release earlier this year. All turkey cooking recommendations for this website have been changed to reflect this update (11/06).

I love the smell of burnt hickory and roasting animal flesh in the afternoon. Smells like.. being at the top of the food chain!

Also, #1 daughter just took a big step towards being able to ride a bike. Finally, she picked out her wedding music a while back.

For your travel liquids. Give those TSA screeners a smile the next time you travel. (Yes, I actually did this when I went to Chicago a couple of weeks ago.. wait, I never blogged anything about Chicago? That needs a post of its own)

Oatmeal long since eaten. Just microwaved some more beans. Heh. On my trip to London Egham, Surrey, England last year, one of things that impressed me the most was the fact that Heinz Beanz were an essential ingredient of every English breakfast. I swear if I lived in England I'd have beans for breakfast, fish and chips and mushy peas for lunch, and curry every night. And ale, all day long. Actually I could do that in America but then it would seem weird. If I lived in England nobody would notice.

I think that Sesame Street has been significantly dumbed down since the old days. In fact I level this same accusation against all of kids TV. Educational TV used to be about teaching kids to read and write and count because they weren't learning that stuff at school. That's the alleged justification for government funding PBS, isn't it? Well actually learning anything from PBS or any other channel is a thing of the past. Actually teaching kids is the domain of videos and DVDs you have to frigging buy. On TV its all either mindless entertainment (which I don't mind as much), or constant preaching about how to behave. Now that I think of it, Sesame Street was probably always this bad. I'm just being old. It's enough to make me want to start the girls on Tom and Jerry and Looney Toons now.

I wanna see some giant balloons.

Blog, I've been ignoring you lately. I'm going to make a conscious effort to blog as many random thoughts as I can manage, in order to not lose them. In that spirit:

One of these days, I'm going to track down a recipe for real old-fashioned "mush", the favorite hot breakfast cereal of old movie characters like the Little Rascals, and serve it to my kids for breakfast. Not today, though. Already made oatmeal.

For various reasons, this oatmeal is the first real meal I've eat since lunch yesterday, which consisted of pork-n-beans. (My wife recently announced that she found something special for me at Big Lots. Turns out it was little pony cans of pork-n-beans. While genuinely delighted to receive canned beans as a gift, their small size means that I ate two yesterday.) I didn't feel particularly starved in the meantime, but now that I've had a taste of the oatmeal my hunger has been awakened.

Why did I let the kids eat all the Canadian bacon? I know its not "real" bacon, but still.

Been reading Achewood lately. Almost but not quite appropriate for a day of turkey cooking: http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=03132003

Like I said, almost.

A turkey breast has been soaking in brine overnight. If it turns out well, I'll tell y'all what was in the brine.

(Firefox's spell checking corrects "ya'll" to "y'all".)

I'm gonna barbecue the thing. No, not with barbecue sauce. I mean I'm gonna slow cook it on the grill with indirect heat and smoke from smoldering smoky wood chips. I have enough Sam Adams in the basement fridge to make this a regular barbecue day. Not only will it free up the kitchen for my wife's use, it'll also keep my older daughter busy watching the grill thermometer. Slow and low.

Windows wants to reboot. Patch Thursday?

Realizing, after hearing a couple of bars of it in an episode of the Simpsons, that one of the pieces of music that you carry around in your head and constantly whistle, is the same tune as Deutschland über alles... priceless!

Not from the official fight this time, but Paco del Stinko's cover of my own song, Butterfly Massacre for Cover Fight 18. It's a real rush to hear someone else sing and play a song that you wrote. Especially someone who plays it better than you did.

I am and shall remain vigilant and sanguine.

Poll: what canned food product, intended for human consumption, bears the greatest similarity to canned dog food?

a) potted meat
b) corned beef hash
c) spam
d) write-in candidate: ________________

(In terms of appearance, texture, and smell.. familiarity with the actual taste of dog food is not required)

read later

"My guns are on you." - Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, Jr., March 16, 1968

Ever wonder what it would sound like if TMBG covered a Gordon Lightfoot tune? It would friggin' rock, and it might sound just little bit like Plastic Rose by the John Benjamin Band.

Is it friend-flooding if I tell people to go vote for somebody else's song?

I think this begins a weekly series of blog posts in which I will pimp other songfighters' fight songs.