Rabbits

I've said it before, I'm definitely a pets person. However, over the past few years I've become less of a fan of the small and fuzzy variety. I'm more of a cat person really, but we have a cat allergy in our house, so I don't have one. I've had dogs, guinea pigs and hamsters over the last few years, and they are OK, but I'm just getting away from them. I'm getting into reptiles more and more, but there is still one small and fuzzy that I do enjoy. Rabbits.

In my experience owning a rabbit is as close as I can get to owning a cat right now. Also, since I've become a rabbit owner, I've grown attached to them in ways you can't with a cat. For instance, rabbits aren't jerks.

The only thing about rabbits that I don't like is that rabbits don't last a really long time. Greg who is pictured above has been our pet for about 4 years now and is probably about 6-7 years old. He's just not going to last all that much longer, and he has been the best pet we have ever had. He's slowly slipping away from us though and has lost a lot of weight and we think he's been having strokes. He's still eating good, but he's got a bad case of head tilt, and very soon he will be gone. I guess if he wasn't so cute, it wouldn't be so sad. We lost another rabbit, Winston a couple years ago, but that was presumably a brain infection, but I've never been positive the vet knew what he was talking about.

Beavis and Butthead

I was a teenager when Beavis and Butthead first aired on Liquid Television back in the day when MTV still played music, occasionally and just about every day I'd get out of school, deliver my papers and then I'd normally get home in time to watch Beavis and Butthead. That was a great way to end a day of school and my paper route.

Alright, I'll admit that they are crude and just a little bit vile, but as a teenager crude and a little bit vile is just alright if you know what I mean. The truth is the show is funny, maybe not in a way that everyone can appreciate, but still it's funny.

I remember one of the controversies about this show. For the first season or two, Beavis was a true pyromaniac with a total preoccupation with fire. He would occasionally just yell out "Fire! Fire! Fire!" and would then talk about lighting something on fire. Some stupid kids emulated Beavis and actually started some fires and hurting themselves, but I really blame the parents for letting young children (like five) watch something that is meant for teenagers who get the jokes. In later seasons they replaced this with words that rhymed, like "Liar!".

Probably the greatest plotline was the whole Cornholio alter-ego of Beavis. Whenever Beavis got over caffienated and started getting his buzz on, he'd pull his shirt up over his head, raise his hands up by his face and assume his Cornholio persona. "I am the great Cornholio, I need tp for my bunghole." Priceless.

French Silk Pie

I said pie. Hahahaha.

Mongolian Barbeque

Most of what people are going to know about Mongolian Barbeque come in the form of chain restaurants like BD's Mongolian BBQ and the such. However there is more to it than that.

The first time I had Mongolian Barbeque was at a little restaurant in Norfolk, VA, and the food was some of the best I'd ever eaten. Since this was my first trip to the bbq, the chef helped me get my plate which started with noodles, not meat like at BD's. Then came the meat and veggies. What surprised me most is that the chef put one ladle of each sauce that was on the sauce bar on the plate and he said that that was the right way to cook it, and it gave the food a unique flavor. Each ladle was a different size and when the dish was all said and done, it was excellent. The main thing though is that it was a noodle dish and the restaurant more of a noodle bar than barbeque.

Still, you can't find those kind of restaurants near here, so BD's will have to do. Actually, I'm headed to the BD's in Flint tomorrow at 6:15 to hang with the old buds.

Coin Collecting

It's said that coin collecting is the hobby of the kings. I don't know too much about that, but coin collecting is my oldest hobby. Ever since I was a kid, something about coins really fascinated me. I live less than 20 miles away from Canada (I looked it up) and Canadian change is always ending up in our change. Unless it's a huge amount, Canadian change has always been a one-to-one conversion here because it's so common. So I would run across lots of Canadian coins in my own change and it fascinated me. I remember when I really got started in the hobby was when I got my first paper route. I'd find tons of cool coins every week. I started that back in 88 or 89, and I would run across wheat pennies, Susan B. Anthony dollars, silver quarters and dimes, mercury dimes, Canadian coins and I even found silver certificates. I found Irish coins, and pennies from Bermuda and The Bahamas. Since I got so much change, it was interesting just what would turn up.

Since then I've kept collecting coins, and I'm mostly interested in world coins because they are interesting. I don't go for the whole state quarters or presidential dollar coins because it's just so kitsch; to me they are just change and I'm not ready to be told what coins to collect. However give me a worthless low value coin from some eastern European country, and I'll hang onto that for ever. I used to hit coin shows, but now I'm kinda into eBay or stores.

On a similar note (preemptive groan) I also like collecting currency, and really like finding something unique like Notgeld or Occupation money. I also collect just about anything with Queen Victoria on it for some reason. I've got one of the coins in the picture.

Goofy Books

This post is probably going to reveal some kind of major character flaw or some kind of issue that should probably referred to a talented psychiatrist, but there's just something about silly books that I really like. The writing in most of these books is pretty good, but the story it just a little twisted.

I would think that the ultimate example of what I'm talking about would be the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series. There is more to the story than just the plot. An accepted absurdity is integral to just how enjoyable the story is. Describing flying as the ability to throw one's self at the ground and miss, or a floating party that has lasted for several generations is a symptom of what I'm talking about. You do have to ask yourself whether or not the author is mentally stable, but when you read their stories, you assume they are and hope and pray that they don't find competent medical assistance any time soon.

However, Douglas Adams certainly doesn't have a monopoly on this kind of writing. Alan Dean Foster, Harry Harrison, Piers Anthony, Craig Shaw Gardner and Steven Brust come to mind rather quickly. I'm sure that there are plenty of other writers who have written in this fashion too, and as I find more of these goofy books, I go ahead and add them to my collection. Whether it's cats being the most advanced species in the universe, a world where movies are real or one totally devoted to bars, if it's strange, someone will write it down.

Deep Fried Cauliflower

While I was dating my wife before we were married, one of the things that we did together was eat over her parents house. My wife's mom can cook really good, and I was introduced to quite a few new dishes that I had never eaten before. Probably one of the best is deep fried cauliflower.

The only other place I've ever eaten deep fried cauliflower is at G's Pizzeria in West Branch. Their cauliflower is much more bite sized, but has the same great flavor. Either way, it's really good with ranch dressing.

So sue me, I did a Cauliflower theme week.

Cream of Cauliflower Soup

For a long time my wife and I would go up to the local fruit market and one of the things that they had between the meat and bakery counters was a soup bar. It was kinda funny, but the soup was made my this older Italian couple, and it was good. They always had a couple soups there, and they were all good. Cream of carrot and Eggplant were some of the most unique ones, but the Beef Barley, Chicken Dumpling and Cream of Broccoli were all very good. However, just about the best soup I've ever had there, or anywhere really was their Cream of Cauliflower. Sadly since then, they eventually stopped selling soup, and I can't get this anymore. It was so popular that you needed to call ahead just to make sure that there was going to be some available on Cream of Cauliflower day.

I've had cream of cauliflower soup that my wife's grandmother makes, and though it's not as good as at Produce Palace, it's still very good. Other than this I don't know anywhere where I can get some of this great stuff.

People make mashed cauliflower as a more healthy alternative to mashed potatoes, and if you have a little imagination, you can say that maybe cream of cauliflower soup tastes like a cross between that and cream of broccoli soup. That's the best analog I can think of to explain it.

Alu Gobi

I like various kinds of ethnic food, and since I work in the Dearborn area, one of the pleasant perks is that over the last decade I've been introduced to a multitude of cuisines that I might not otherwise have enjoyed. Thai, Polish, Mexican, Arabic, and Indian just to name a few, the dishes I've sampled at lunch really can make it easier to get through the day, and have changed my tastes quite a bit.

One of my favorite discoveries was Alu Gobi, or Cauliflower Alu. There's a decent Indian restaurant about 3 miles from where I work that has a nice buffet. Tandoori Chicken, Naan, Curry and Basmati Rice are common fare on this buffet, but there's a few dishes that rotate depending on the day, and one day the main Alu dish was cauliflower based. There's just something about cauliflower that is so tasty. It bears a lot of similarity to broccoli, but it's not as fibrous, nor is the taste quite as harsh. It absorbs sauces better, and there is little taste difference between the buds and stems.

In my opinion, cauliflower is on of the better vegetables, especially for cooking. There's so much you can do with it. It's use in Alu Gobi is similar to potato, as it really encorporates the tastes of all the spices and sauces, but it does it without becoming mushy, which is why I like it more than potato. I also think it has a better taste than potato, so I like it better in Alu than potato. The only other ingredient that I've had in an Alu is eggplant, which while it was ok, wasn't anywhere as good as the cauliflower.

It's hard to describe a taste in words, but what I can tell you about Alu Gobi is that it has a savory taste. It definitely has some similarities to other indian dishes, at least spice wise, but there's something about this dish that puts it up above other similar dishes. It just works.

Tahitian Treat

I like fruit punch a lot. I used to have a routine that I'd go through during college. Breakfast was a quart of Quik to wash down a honey bun, and lunch always started with a large bottle of fruit punch. I'd buy a quart of it, and it would last me through about three classes. I'm talking about a huge bunch of "life am good" here if you know what I mean.

I realize that as a child I never developed a taste for cola of any type, so I was stuck trying to find alternative beverages to please my palate. I think it was about this time that I got hooked on fruit punch before I transitioned into the harder stuff, like Mountain Dew or Sprite. I also spent a lot of time as a kid in the south, so I had access to some beverages that just aren't sold in the northern market. So I grew up drinking Mello Yello, Grape and Peach Nehi, as well as Tahitian Treat. It seems that of these beverages, the only one I can ever find is Mello Yello, and most of the time, I can't find that. A&P used to carry Tahitian Treat maybe fifteen years ago, but since then, nothing.

There is a problem though with some of the fruit punches that are marketed. Many of them are just a ton of dissolved sugar, and are so sweet and dry, that you either need to cut it with water, or chase it with some if you expect to quench your thirst. Tahitian Treat however is just slightly carbonated, and maybe just a little less sugary, so it doesn't make you thirsty just drinking it. Also, the carbonation isn't so strong that it is harsh. Mmm, makes me wish I didn't live here just thinking about it.

Ringworld

Alright, trying to get back in the swing of this after the long holiday (I scheduled a few weeks so I could take a holiday from blogging too). I'll probably do a few short posts to start off the year with more detail later.

I am looking back on this tetrology with a bit of a sketchy memory as I read the books between two and four years ago. As I remember, there are three aspects of this series that are worth talking about: tech, plot, and character development.

First of all is the tech. There's a lot of different technologies driving these stories. The first is the actual ringworld, which is a long spinning ring that is orbiting a star at about the distance that the Earth rotates around the Sun. It is about 600 million miles in circumference and a million miles wide. The sheer size is just really inconceivable, and all the artwork I've ever seen don't even approach doing the concept justice. The ringworld is 3 million times the surface area of Earth, so lets say you took Earth's 6.7 billion people, and placed them on the ring world 3 million times, you would have over 20 quintillion (20,000,000,000,000,000) people. So this is big, and in art work where you see maybe 1/5th the structure, and they add detail, anywhere from individual mountains to buildings. I'm sorry, you are doing it wrong.

There are other interesting bits of tech like the Klemperer rosette that are also just cool, and Niven doesn't make the mistake of taking technology that is near future and glamorizes it. Case in point, I remember Clarke and Gentry in Cradle talking about the techiness of a 1993 Sony camcorder. The tech that drives this story isn't something we are likely to come out with next week, so at least in my lifetime the tech won't be dated by the latest consumer product. I'd also compare the way the tech drives this story to the way tech drives Clarke's Rama series.

The plot is good, and I'm not going to add any spoilers, but as the four books progress, they become less tech driven, and more character driven. It kinda feels like as the characters get used to the new tech, it becomes less of a driving force, and you find yourself getting used to the new concepts at the same time. In some kind of proxy way, you and the characters grow into the tech at the same time.

The last couple of books seem to be more character driven than anything else, and it all revolves around Louis Wu, either directly or indirectly. It's hard to imagine that any one person really can have that much impact on the galaxy. Maybe that's the point.

As a final aside, the Kzin, a feline like race that one of the main characters belongs to, was featured on Star Trek The Animated Series. I'm guessing they were made the villians of a story as a sort of homage to Niven's work, and I think it's kinda cool.

Deminski & Doyle

Alright, special post this year. I'm scheduling this post to coincide with the launch date of their first morning broadcast this year. Yeah, I know that they had a New Years Party, but I wanted to blog today, so I'm going to.

The Deminski & Doyle Show is the best radio show in the Detroit market, bar none. They started their first show back in 1999, and I remember the day. 97.1 had been experimenting with several afternoon talk shows. Early in 1999 they had tried out the Mike and Don show and replaced that with some guy from Chicago I can't remember who sucked. They kept that guy on all summer, but at the beginning of August, the station started running promos for a couple of guys who were from Jersey who would do a local show here. To be honest, I almost stopped listening to talk radio all together believing that 97.1 was just screwing up even more. How wrong I was.

You see, I had a 60-90 minute commute back in '99 and sure you can listen to the news for about 4 minutes, but then they just repeat, so that's no good. To be honest, I can't just listen to music for an hour without getting sleepy, so it was either repeats of news, or the talk station. So I listened to the first show on August 23, 1999, and kept listening for over 8 years.

It took me a few days to catch on to what these guys were trying to do. Every other talk radio show that was in this slot had either been raunchy or whiny. Jeff and Bill were neither of these, and instead they were down to earth normal guys. They had a show about stuff that regular people could relate to and enjoy.

I listened to this show until 2007 when two things happened. First, there was a format change from talk to sports, and D&D were moved from a afternoon drive slot to the morning program. The traffic in the morning is about half what it is in the afternoon, and I didn't get a chance to listen while I was at work, so I listened a lot less. Then in December of 07, D&D decided not to renew their contract, and because of their non-compete, they were off the air all of 2008.

2008 was a dark year for radio in Detroit.

Then, this morning at 6am, D&D began their normal time for their new morning show on WCSX. I was out in traffic around 6:30 and listened to most of their show today. Rudy the phone screener and Nicole the traffic girl are back, as are a lot of the hardcore group of fans that are well known to many of the listeners. After such a dry year, it's good to finally hear them again. You can listen to them yourself by going to WCSX's website, and streaming it from there.

Dalla Dalla Bill!