Zobar's Journal

08/02/2006 22:35 #37363

naked disco queers
Category: naked disco queers

Thing #1: The super-ghetto school-bus-conversion ice cream trucks seem to be improving, technologically. The one I saw yesterday on Delaware Ave had a drum track to its little tune, and a number of weird sound effects. It went: 'It's a small world after all [boioioing!] It's a small world after all [whizzz!]' all the way down the street. It sounded extra demented as it left and the doppler effect detuned it to a weird modal industrio-prog-rock thing.

Thing #2: One of my coworkers in the back office finally said 'enough of this shit, I can't work in this hot office,' and moved his computer up to the conference table. As he was working there this afternoon, suddenly a stream of water started pouring out of the ceiling and onto his head. Apparently, the central air conditioning unit that is supposed to cool the front office froze solid, shut off, and when the ice block it had created around itself started melting in the summer heat, it drained directly onto my coworker's chrome-dome.

Thing #3: We made our first formal announcement for our newest popularity contest

this afternoon at about 12:30pm; just this afternoon we got two very good entries already. One of the entries was a decent but fairly average metal band; the other was a naked disco queer. There is no contest. If I could cancel the contest and declare a winner, it would totally be the naked disco queer, who says his shows are 'fabulous and horrible at the same time - like a trainwreck with box cars full of glitter.' He will be playing a show at a nudist beach in Florida in November. In his press photo, he is wearing nothing but a pair of tighty-whities and daring you to make fun of him so he can beat your ass. One of the sample songs he submitted is entitled 'Where in the Hell is North Tonawanda?' which, by the way, is my new journal music. This man is a rock star, in the purest sense of the word.

- Z

_______________
Kendall, 'Where In the Hell is North Tonawanda?' gather:0353400001154572215

07/26/2006 10:55 #37362

weirdest email, ever
Category: weirdoes

No subject, no signature:

Where can I get Dr. Klein's Bagel Bars in Grand Rapids , MI ??

So I typed "Dr. Klein's Bagel Bars" into Google with unexpected

results. So I typed "Bagels near Grand Rapids, MI" into Google Maps and replied:

Have you tried the Bagel Beanery out in Wyoming on Clyde Park Ave near the park?

- Z

_______________
New journal music: "Keep It Hot for Daddy" by Soul Position. gather:0266278001153925680

paul - 08/02/06 22:28
This was the best entry ever. I forgot to comment about how entertaining I had found it.

mrmike - 07/26/06 19:21
I'm almost done incorporating Dragonlady's dad in a spongebob cartoon. I meant to tell you nice beanie

07/18/2006 18:37 #37361

fotosjøp
Category: contest

I finally got around to installing The Gimp on my new laptop. [I would have gone with Photoshop, but I haven't yet installed any pirated software on this computer, and I didn't want to start now.]

So now [is this too corny for (e:strip)?] I want to start a Photoshop [..., Gimp, MS Paint, ...] contest on the theme of this photo of (e:dragonlady7) 's dad:

The only rule is, keep it clean [consider it a test of your sense of humor]. Here's the first entry to get this train wreck

a-rollin':

Winner gets ... beer?

- Z

metalpeter - 07/18/06 19:21
I don't have photoshop so I'm out but i look forward to seeing some really interesting pictures, I can picture a couple in my mind but would have no idea how to do them.

jessbob - 07/18/06 19:08
Have you ever seen SomethingAwful's Photoshop Phriday? :::link:::

theecarey - 07/18/06 18:46
haha this is hilarious! Great photo to take advantgage of here. Hope people jump on it.. I can just imagine the possibilities!

Do we get to know what he was really looking at?
:)

07/17/2006 13:49 #37360

god damnit
Category: potpourri

Now we've got these weird fuckers popping out all over the place. [see previous post]

- Z

jenks - 07/17/06 22:46
hahahahahahha that's hysterical

kara - 07/17/06 15:17
To kill your afternoon:
:::link:::

07/17/2006 13:18 #37359

city of dis
Category: potpourri

We used to have an air conditioner in the office, but it didn't work very well. This morning we replaced it with a convenient portal to the underworld.

Last night I made spaghetti with a very flavorful magic red pesto.

Ingredients:
1/4c extra-virgin olive oil
1/3c sun-dried tomatoes in oil [chopped?]
1c fresh basil
2+ cloves garlic
1/3c parmesan cheese
1lb thin spaghetti
Use your imagination.

Instructions:
Use your imagination on the olive oil. [Your imagination doesn't have to be very good if you have a lot of it.] Filter the olive oil into a food processor, along with the sun-dried tomatoes, basil, garlic, and parmesan. Process until finely chopped. Cook the spaghetti. Drain the noodles, saving 1/2c of the noodle water for the pesto [I'm not sure why it has to be noodle water, but that's what the recipe says]. Add the noodle water to the pesto, mix, and toss with the noodles.

- Z

zobar - 07/18/06 22:58
Interesting. When I was living at college on about $5/day I came up with a pretty decent sauce made almost exclusively from my roommates' nonperishables I scrounged out of the cabinets. I really didn't have time for formal processes and mother sauces - just dump it all on angel hair [cooks faster than ramen] and enjoy. It was different every time I made it, but usually involved combinations of olive oil/butter, rice vinegar, soy sauce/salt, parmesan, oregano, and fresh ground pepper. It's super-weird, but I dig the way the soy sauce and parmesan taste together, especially with the pepper. Sometimes I still make my pasta like that [or use it as a salad dressing] but now I've got fresh herbs from the garden as well.

- Z

mrdt - 07/18/06 21:29
well, given the fact that I'm staring at about 40 cookbooks or so, and am completely passionate about food let me provide some culinary education for you...

In classic french tradition we are given 5 mother sauces: the veloute, which usually is a roux thickened fish stock; the bechemel, which is the well known cream sauce; hollandaise, which is the egg emulsion; espangnol or brown sauce derived from animal stock; and the tomato sauce, which you don't like. All of these sauces can be used to create a set of secondary sauces and in one way or another have found their way to the noodle. The veloute is the primary sauce for the secondary sauce Provencal and the bechemel is the primary sauce for the secondary sauce Mornay, which is a cheese sauce used in Macaroni & Cheese or Philly Steaks (although don't tell the guy at Pat's that his canned sauce is actually a Mornay).

Most sauces start from what we call a fond, which is french for foundation. This fond is often a stock that has been cooked with animal bones and aromatics slowly for hours and hours. You can't expect to make a good sauce with out a good foundation. Whether fresh eggs and cream or a well reduced gelatinous white chicken stock this is where sauce making begins.

Another rule about saucing pasta that I leave you to explore for yourself is: The thickness of the noodle determines how thick your sauce should be (ie, angel hair vs. pappardale).

Some of my most treasured cookbook are Julia child's & Simon Beck's Matering the Art of Frenck Cooking, Janques Pepin's Complete Techniques, Tom Colicchio's Thinl Like a Chef and Mario Battali's Simple Italian Food.

I urge you to explore the exploding world of cuisine and don't let something you are not particularly fond of prevent you from trying some extraordinary cooking. You never know - the food might be prepared better and fresher than the first time you tried something.

zobar - 07/18/06 08:03
Not really chimichurri. I wouldn't really consider it a pesto either, but that's how it's filed in Joy. The point of it is that I don't really like tomato sauce all that much, so I'm always looking for different things to put on my noodles.

- Z

mrdt - 07/17/06 23:00
so you kind of made a chimichurri with pot? What for?

As far as tha pasta water in the pesto, I've never heard that. My binder comes from the the open chemical chain in pine nuts. After I have an emulsification from the initial ingredients I add the pine nuts to secure everything. This is the same principle behind dry mustard in viniagrettes.

zobar - 07/17/06 14:19
I think it becomes technical-virgin olive oil.

- Z

dragonlady7 - 07/17/06 14:17
I don't think the olive oil counts as extra-virgin if you've sauteed a half-pound of freaking marijuana in it for an hour.

leetee - 07/17/06 14:07
I beleive the basic idea on using the water from cooking noodles or pasta is that it contains starch that will help the sauce bind together better, while providing needed moisture at the same time. But i'm not a food scientist... i just watch too much of the Food Network.