countrycousin

scirocco

en_ki

merle_

nightspore

idonotlikepeas

mrw42

wolfy

Pick a number. The winner is the person who guesses the closest to 2/3 of the average of the other guesses.

There is waiting time involved, so start this before the rest of your morning routine.

1. roast garlic
   1. start the oven preheating at 375
   2. take a whole head of garlic (or a few) and chop the tip(s) off; you should be able to see inside every clove
   3. stick it in an oven-safe dish or bowl (smaller is better)
   4. cover the exposed top with olive oil
   5. let the oil soak in and put some more on
   6. cover the dish (I used foil) and stick it in the oven
   7. go shower, dress, do the dishes, whatever
2. 45 minutes or so later, your house smells like garlic and you're maybe feeling the hunger a little; take the dish out and uncover it so it can cool off while you do the rest
3. cut up an onion and fry that shit up
4. when the onion is about done (translucent to brown, depending on taste),
   1. put some cheddar on and don't be stingy
   2. squeeze all the squishy garlic innards out into the pan. All of them. DO IT.
   3. apply 3 or 4 eggs or equivalent and do the omelet thing

I cannot overemphasize the importance of there being a fuckton of garlic. If you feel a little hazy afterward, like maybe you're not sure if you accidentally used whiskey instead of garlic, and you want to lie down for a while and try to remember if that's what you did, that is about where you want to be.

I'm doing it again for dinner, but with kale.

Frisch zu.
Mein du?

?

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xylem

4 (66.7%)

phloem

2 (33.3%)

As you've surely heard, LiveJournal has been suffering from a DDoS attack, generally believed to be an attempt by the Russian government to silence its critics.

Some people are switching to other services. Those other services may be lovely places to go or they may be stinking hellholes that exist to serve the enemies of mankind; but either way, fuck that. LJ deserves our support.

I was among those who was unhappy when LJ was sold (and, as a permanent member, unhappy that I didn't have a good way to speak up about that), and I hate the attempts to facebookize this thing, but this is a good and valuable service, and if the forces of evil are spending resources to attack it, it must be making a difference over there. If it were a nonprofit, I'd be donating, but it's not, so:

4 years of paid account time are up for bid, to be distributed midnight Sunday night. In the comments, link to stuff that you or someone else has posted on LJ that serves one of the following purposes:

• translating a significant volume of the Russian political traffic on LJ into English
• explaining (with sources) the Russian political situation for American readers: who wants to silence critics, what the critics are saying, and where the truth of the situation lies
• documenting work with actual effect in the real world to defend LJ from attack
• documenting work with actual effect in the real world to defend Russian political freedom in general and/or the current set of dissidents in particular

or just recommend to me the best Russian-language bloggers or communities who don't already have paid accounts.

"I have two grandchildren... . I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American."
—Newt Gingrich, March 28th

        A normal Denny's, Spires-like coffee shop in Los Angeles.
        It's about 9:00 in the morning.  While the place isn't jammed,
        there's a healthy number of people drinking coffee, munching
        on bacon and eating eggs.

        A WAITRESS comes by with a pot of coffee.

                                  WAITRESS
                       Can I get anybody anymore coffee?

        The Waitress pours the Young Woman's coffee.  The Young Man
        lights up another cigarette.

        The Waitress leaves.  The Young Man takes a drag off of his
        smoke.  The Young Woman pours a ton of cream and sugar into
        her coffee.

        English Dave puts Vince's coffee in front of him.

        While Butch waits for his smokes, Vincent just sips his
        coffee, staring at him.  Butch looks over at him.

        Inside the taxi, behind the wheel, is a female cabbie named
        ESMARELDA VILLALOBOS.  A young woman, with Spanish looks, sits
        parked, drinking a steaming hot cup of coffee out of a white
        styrofoam cup.

        She takes a sip of coffee, then hears a NOISE behind her in
        the alley.  She sticks her head out of the car door to see:

                                  FABIAN
                            (referring to his
                              clothes)
                       Oh yes, that looks nice.  To drink,
                       a tall glass or orange juice and a
                       black cup of coffee.  After that,
                       I'm going to have a slice of pie.

        THROUGH THE WINDSHIELD
        the big man himself, Marsellus Wallace, exit Teriyaki Donut,
        carrying a box of a dozen donuts and two large styrofoam cups
        of coffee.  He steps off the curb, crossing the street in
        front of Butch's car.  This is the first time we see Marsellus
        clearly.

        The little Honda SLAMS into Marsellus, sending him, the donuts
        and the coffee HITTING the pavement at thirty miles an hour.

        Three men are standing in Jimmie's kitchen, each with a mug of
        coffee.  Jules, Vincent and JIMMIE DIMMICK, a young man in his
        late-20s dressed in a bathrobe.

                                  JIMMIE
                       I'm not a cobb or corn, so you can
                       stop butterin' me up.  I don't need
                       you to tell me how good my coffee
                       is.  I'm the one who buys it, I
                       know how fuckin' good it is.  When
                       Bonnie goes shoppin;, she buys
                       shit.  I buy the gourmet expensive
                       stuff 'cause when I drink it, I
                       wanna taste it.  But what's on my
                       mind at this moment isn't the
                       coffee in my kitchen, it's the dead
                       nigger in my garage.

                                  THE WOLF
                       Do me a favor, will ya?  Thought I
                       smelled some coffee in there.
                       Would you make me a cup?

        Jimmie hands The Wolf a cup of coffee.

        Jules and Vincent sit at a booth.  In front of Vincent is a
        big stack of pancakes and sausages, which he eats with gusto.
        Jules, on the other hand, just has a cup of coffee and a
        muffin.  He seems far away in thought.  The Waitress pours a
        refill for both men,

                                  VINCENT
                       Thanks a bunch.
                            (to Jules, who's
                              nursing his coffee)
                       Want a sausage?

        Vincent takes a bite of food.  Jules takes a sip of coffee
        In the b.g., we see a PATRON call the Waitress.

                                  JULES
                       Yeah.  I was just sitting here
                       drinking my coffee, eating my
                       muffin, playin' the incident in my
                       head, when I had what alcoholics
                       refer to as a "moment of clarity."

        Jules, who was never risen from his seat the whole time, takes
        a sip of coffee.

The Pulp Fiction script reduced to paragraphs that mention coffee. I blame nightspore and the sensual delight which is finely-ground Dunkin' Donuts coffee run through an Aeropress. Trimmed to include only coffee per se, not "coffee table", "coffee shop", and "coffee can", with which it would be much longer. Can be reproduced with

curl http://www.godamongdirectors.com/scripts/pulp.shtml | sed -e '1,/^<PRE>/d;/^<\/PRE>/,$d' | perl -00ne 'print if /coffee(?!\s*(shop|table|can))/'

except for one paragraph mistakenly included due to stray whitespace.

1. you need me
   like the wind needs the trees
   to blow in
   like the moon needs poetry





2. Thou great star! What would be thy happiness if thou hadst not those for whom thou shinest!

Having lived in Boston for around 30 years, I've noticed now and then that many people there are confused about what a city is. Since every two-bit hamlet in New England that has outgrown the "town meeting" system of government sees fit to call itself a city, this is understandable.

city, n.: a more-or-less contiguous region served by a 24-hour public transit system and possessing at least one walkable district containing 24-hour restaurants, food markets, bars, and coffee shops

New York, London, Tokyo; Chicago, Seattle, even (as I'm discovering) New Orleans: these are cities; Boston, by contrast, is an agglomeration of college towns. Boston hasn't yet even managed to annex most of its major neighborhoods: if it were a city, Brookline, Cambridge, and Somerville would all be part of it for sure, as probably would Malden, Revere, Arlington, Medford, Dedham, Chelsea, Waltham, and so on. As it is, not a single subway line stays within the "city".

Since Boston has abdicated its seemingly natural leadership role in the region, there is something of a power vacuum crying to be filled. Of the various neighborhoods served by subway lines and calling themselves "city", I continue to believe that Somerville has the strongest natural claim, not least because we are free of major ties to any of the local degree-granting institutions, allowing us to act as a neutral arbiter rather than a captive government like our neighbors to the north and south. Write to your mayor, councillor, or selectbeing today and tell them you want to merge with Somerville.

Jesus ______ Christ

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Haploid
5 (31.2%)
Hussein
1 (6.2%)
Xavier
2 (12.5%)
Fucking
8 (50.0%)

We didn’t know it, but apparently Tuesday was also the launch date for Glenn Beck’s new book, Broke. Our book at #1 ... prevented him from claiming the top spot, and so he called us out on his radio program Wednesday. ...

... here’s the executive summary: (a) His book is supposed to be #1. (b) The fact that it’s not, but ours is, is evidence of a liberal “culture of death” that is threatening to take over America and destroy everything sensible folks hold dear, a menace that can presumably only be stemmed by folks buying his book and making it #1.

Let me contextualize this for you, in the form of a parable in which all of the details are true.

A young entrepreneur, the son of a self-made immigrant small-business owner (a God-fearing Protestant who’d married a girl from a family of missionaries), had a crazy pie-in-the-sky idea. Having learned the rudiments of business by working since he was small in the family store, he struck out after his goal, investing himself into something he really believed in, inspiring both colleagues and strangers to join his cause even as “big business” slammed door after door in his face. For years he toiled long into the night, gradually growing his own small business by being as honest, kind and creative as he could manage. Ultimately, in a tremendous Rudy-like moment, he and his ragtag band of reg’lar folks — for one glorious day — accidentally made the twelfth book by the multimillionaire host of “the third-most-listened-to show in all of America” debut at #3 on one single bookseller’s list, rather than at #1.