Talking Points Memo Hilarious Romney Ad
Makes some pretty good points, but in the end, I couldn’t justify the effort it would take to participate in the daily KOS’ campaign. Besides the fact that I have a hard time getting fired up to go through the whole primary voting rig-a-ma-roll for what amounts to a practical joke, I am a little worried that this little joke (ha-ha– let’s vote for Romney) will lead to nominee Romney and then president Romney. As Jack “who?” Lessenberry said/wrote, the last time Michganders did that, they voted for Reagan. And that turned out freakin’ hilarious, didn’t it?
David Lynch not a fan of the iPhone
I know that this has been posted on a lot of places, but I still enjoy it:
After X-Mas in Florida
Normally, Christmas is an “every other year” thing with different sets of parents: one year we go to Iowa, the next year we go to Florida. But because of the way the holiday fell this year, because we decided to celebrate Krause Christmas the weekend before the actual day itself (a good time was had by one and all, btw), and because we don’t start school at EMU again until January 7, we decided to double-dip with family visits. So we flew down to Southwest Florida Christmas day, and we’re leaving New Year’s Eve day.
Florida is always a strange place to visit for me, and the holidaze time is not much different. It’s nice to be sitting by the pool and enjoying sunny weather in the low 80s, but it is strange nonetheless. It’s a lot more crowded than I remember this time of year, too.
Anyway, one of the highlights of the trip has been the visit to Everglades National Park and the Shark Valley Trail. Basically, it’s a paved road that goes out into the swamp 7 miles to an observation tower. You can get out there by tram, but, as the video above documents, we rented bikes (well, Bill and Irmgard brought their own and one for Will). The video doesn’t do complete justice because there were a ton of birds, quite a few big turtles, and many many more alligators. From the observation tower, we saw some giant crane kind of bird swim under water, catch a big fish, and gulp ’em down. Pretty neat stuff, though I cannot imagine how awful it would be to be out here in the summer.
Tonight Annette and I are going out to see Sweeney Todd and out for a fancy dinner. Tomorrow, we’re going to the beach. Monday, we’re going home. And in-between all this, I’m trying to get my ducks in a row for Winter term.
Martha Stewart’s prison Christmas
I found this via boing-boing: it turns out that while Martha Stewart was in prison, she made a really kick-ass nativity scene in ceramics class (session? time?). I would include the video here if I knew how; but just follow this link and deal with the first few minutes of introductions to get to the bit about prison pottery.
X-Mas in Iowa post (I couldn’t resist)
MY millions of loyal readers will recall that I said I wasn’t going to post until after the Christmas season, kind of in an effort to get away from teh Internets for a while. You can tell how well that’s worked out. Jeesh. Actually, the only reason I’m posting now is to procrastinate a bit and to post this video I made with my cell phone:
Annette and I were in a drug store and they had a row of all of these reindeer things that rocked in rocking chairs while singing “Grandma Got Ran Over By a Reindeer.” Naturally, I had to push the button to make all of them work. You can imagine how proud Annette was. As you can see, I recorded it with my lame cell phone video camera; rotate your monitor 90 degrees clockwise of optimal viewing.
Other Iowa travel news:
- No travel problems to speak of on the way here, but we are nervously watching the weather channel for our return on Monday.
- While Annette has attempted to be an earnest and good person (she is at the gym as I type), I apparently have seen this as an opportunity to fatten up on cookies, sugar, BBQ, and eggs, not necessarily all at the same time.
- The grand kiddies seem to enjoy running about the house and screaming. Joy.
- You have certainly heard of this whole Iowa caucus thing. It puts a whole different vibe on stuff here compared to Michigan. Literally, every other ad on TV out here is a political spot. My father told me that something like 25% of Iowans have met at least one of the candidates ; I know my mother has seen both Hillary and Obama. It’s all a little bizarre to me.
Anyway, back to reading and chasing after kiddies. Enjoy the reindeer over and over again.
Something to hold you over until next year
We’re getting ready to do the family holiday thing around here (first to Iowa, then to Florida– an unusual “duel parental visit” Christmas season trip), and I’ve decided more or less on the spur of the moment to not take my computer. I’ll probably borrow Annette’s to check my email a couple of times in the next two weeks, but that’ll be about it. I dunno, I kind of feel like it might do me some good to have some computer “away time,” and I have a bunch of reading (both school and for fun) that I want to do, and I’m afraid that if I take my computer, then what I’ll do is pick at that instead.
But not to leave my millions of regular readers in the lurch, I thought I’d share with you a bery strange movie trailer I came across, Fiend of Dope Island:
It is completely apropos of nothing in my life, but man, this movie appears to have it all: drugs, sex, tropical climes, and Yugoslavian bombshells. Here’s what IMDB had to say. If anyone sees it over the holiday, let me know. See y’all next year.
Snow day sledding
Today was a snow day for pretty much every school in Southeast Michigan following the biggest snowstorm we’ve had around here in a number of years. Frankly, I thought the snow day thing was very unnecessary, at least in Ypsilanti. Sunday was pretty bad, but by last night, everything seemed pretty much plowed to me. I think what really happened here is that collectively and spontaneously, all of the school districts in the area decided that this was going to be the one and only legitimate chance to get a snow day yet this calendar year and they took it, necessary or not.
Anyway, the unnecessary snow day gave us the chance to go sledding– or rather, for Will, Costas, Rachel, Eli, Celia, and other various kids went sledding while I stood on the side of the hill behind Ypsilanti High School drinking coffee and recording with the trusty FlipVideo camera. Here’s the result:
A good time for one and all; besides the coffee, I (and Will and Costas) enjoyed some excellent hot chocolate afterwards. I even found some marshmallows that weren’t stale.
Pepper Nuts, the movie
I had been working on the movie that documented this year’s batch of “Pepper Nuts” off and on since I actually made the batch a couple of weeks ago, but I was inspired to finish it up because of this comment I received on this post I wrote three years ago with that year’s batch of Pepper Nuts:
I had a very similar recipe that I lost and have searched in vain for every year at Christmas time. I spent half an hour searching the internet for this recipe. With all the variety of pfeffernusse, I tried, “pfeffernuse rope anise” as a serch phrase to try to zero in on a recipe like I remembered. I finally found your post with the search phrase, “pfeffernuse dog food.” I’m so glad you included those key words and now I can make the cookies I remember.
Dog food-like indeed.
Well, since I’ve been playing around with my FlipVideo camera all year, I thought it made perfect sense to make the movie version of this year’s baking weekend. So, co-starring my able assistant Will, I give you “Pepper Nuts, the movie.”
In addition, let me offer an updated version of recipe here:
Grandma Krause’s Pepper Nuts
1 cup dark karo syrup
1/2 cup molasses
1 cup butter, softened (or margarine or crisco or, in the old days, lard)
1 1/2 cups of sugar
1/2 cup hot water
2 tsps baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp anise oil
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
7 cups (or so) flour
1.In your trusty KitchenAid standing mixer mix together the syrup, molasses, butter, sugar and hot water until well combined. If you lack a standing mixer, you can do this with a large bowl and a hand mixer.
2. Add everything else but the flour and continue mixing until combined.
3. Start adding the flour, about a cup at a time, mixing each time until the flour is well incorporated. If you have a trusty KitchenAid standing mixer, lucky you! You can keep mixing this until all seven cups of flour are combined. I shifted from the regular mixing paddle to the bread hook attachment after the fifth cup of flour.
If you don’t have a standing mixer (unlucky you!), you’ll probably have to give up on the hand mixer after the fourth or fifth cup of flour and knead the rest of the flour in as you might with the making of bread or pizza dough.
Either way, you may have to add a little more or a little less flour to get a dough that is moist but not sticky.
4. Take about a handful of the finished dough and roll it out on a lightly floured surface in long snakes that are about the width of your pinky. Lay these out on a cookie sheet. You can create different layers of the dough snakes by separating them with parchment paper or plastic sheeting.
5. Chill these dough snakes. Grandma Krause’s recipe said to chill “overnight or for at least a couple of hours.” I have done this before by putting them in the freezer or outside (which is as cold as the freezer, of course) for an hour or so, though in the movie, I left them out overnight with no adverse effect. They do need to be chilled and even a bit dried out.
6. When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350-375 degrees. (It kind of depends on your oven, but while Grandma Krause said 350, I think 375 is probably more accurate). Take each snake and cut them into tiny bite-sized pieces of dough. Put the little dough pieces onto a cookie sheet, being sure to spread them out so they don’t touch either. The cookies will expand slightly in size.
7. Bake about 9 or 10 minutes or until golden brown. Cool them on a clean counter or a clean cookie sheet and store them in a sealed container. Serve them in little bowls as if they were nuts. Makes a pailful.
The movie version of “The Golden Compass” blows chunks (IMO)
We went and saw The Golden Compass this afternoon, and, as my subject line here suggests, I was disappointed. Warning to folks who don’t want either the movie or the book spoiled for them: spoilers after the jump.
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