I love this with my whole black heart.
Visually, the business of great awkwardness tipping over into solid cool underscores every great story you’ve ever heard and is put to good use here. Watch the drummers and consider the metronome. Also: what the dancers are doing is wildly unlikely at that tempo. Awesome.
Dum dee dum dum hangin’ around with my brain la lala laaa – wutzis, Einsteinio?
New Jerseyites Hate New Solar Panels, Brand Them “Hideous”
Ahhhhh shit.
Residents of New Jersey, a state well known for its elegant aesthetic sense, are unhappy with the solar panels installed on electrical poles in leafy residential neighborhoods by the state’s largest utility company. In suburban Bergen County, locals call the panels “ugly,” “hideous,” and an “eyesore,” in addition to protesting their installation with complaints and (possibly) vandalism, according to the New York Times.
Zis post linkies to an article. I’d give you a boost over the paywall, but I dislike muddy footprints on my manicured fingertips. Yes, I read that article. No, you don’t need to read it. It’s every stupid, venal thing about loudmouthed, entitled New Jersey douchebags you expect to find in one place and track suits, because apparently reporters from one of the most important newspapers on the planet no longer ask simple questions like, “So the poles and lines: attractive or really, really attractive?”
New Jersey has a robust alternative energy plan that aims to secure 23 percent of its electricity from renewable sources within ten years–an ambitious goal that’ll be all the more difficult to achieve if suburbanites protest the installation of solar panels on their streets. At the moment, there are talks in some towns about the efficiency of the current setup compared with how much the residents are annoyed by them-some say the panels interfere with emergency call boxes, or that spreading out the panels in this way somehow impedes efficiency (that part’s not true, according to solar experts). But it looks like New Jersey’s solar plans aren’t in any serious danger: The resistance is only in certain small pockets of the state, and the utility owns the electric poles anyway, so there’s not much those angry suburbanites can do. Maybe they’d prefer some ivy-shaped panels instead?
Zazazazaza in other words les douchebags with les flappylips will lose la soleil, but the rest of us won’t wallow. Oui oui oui!
I think every American over the age of nine needs to hear this – no exceptions.
On one hand, the World Chocolate Championships are on useless and lost Planet Green tonight.
On the other, what the fuck is this?
Shhhhh! We'we hunting wabbits.
Low-density polyethylene Above-ground portion is 23″ in diameter x 34″ H; basket is 15″ in diameter and 18″ H Installation requires digging a hole large enough for the basket to be underground A small amount of residue will eventually accumulate in the basket, requiring cleaning every few years
Okay, polyethylene tube, basket in a hole. Not a composter?
Zero-Waste Digester Handles What Composters Can’t
Unlike a composter, a food digester lets you dispose of all of your kitchen scraps, including dairy, meat and fish scraps, bones and bread. Rather than producing compost for your garden, its purpose is to reduce household waste. Materials collect in a perforated underground basket, where earthworms and other soil organisms break them down into carbon dioxide, water and just a small amount of solid residue. Works best in a sunny spot with well-drained soil. May be used for disposal of pet waste, too.
Excellent. I have wasteful pets. But wait: there’s more!
Dispose of all of your kitchen scraps, including dairy, meat and bones Reduce household waste in landfills Instructions for the Zero-Waster Food Digester
Not a lot of new information there, but still: if all it takes to dispose of most of your organic kitchen goop and pet poop is a 3′ x 2′ plastic tube and a 1′ x 1′ basket WHY DO WE HAVE A GODDAMN GARBAGE PROBLEM? Why do we have dumps full of carrot ends? Why did I throw chicken bones into a frigging Hefty bag after dinner tonight? Why doesn’t every house with a yard in America have a homemade version of this – since forever?
I DON’T KNOW.
I have GOT to stop shouting about trash.
Siobhan’s housemate broke up with her live-in boyfriend on Friday afternoon and had a date with someone else that night. While I am impressed with her scheduling prowess and determined carpe-ing of a Friday p.m., I am somewhat dismayed that the housemate’s sudden braising in new juices caused Siobhan to lose sleep when the live-in boyfriend moved out in an after-midnight sense that coincided with a before-breakfast sensibility. This caused me to think about how miserable a housemate I might have been during the decade or so I burned a swath across the local social scene. Ah, well. It’s so inconvenient for Me to have to think about other people! But while I’m at it, let’s both think about this person, Michigan State Senator Bruce Caswell:
Yes. That's his real face.
“I never had anything new,” Caswell says. “I got all the hand-me-downs. And my dad, he did a lot of shopping at the Salvation Army, and his comment was – and quite frankly it’s true – once you’re out of the store and you walk down the street, nobody knows where you bought your clothes.”
Bruce, that must’ve been terrible for you. I’m sure the indignity of wearing secondhand clothing as a child and worrying about what other people thought made you a compassionate adult with nothing but love in your heart for disadvantaged children.
Foster children in Michigan would use their state-funded clothing allowance only in thrift stores under a plan suggested by State Senator Bruce Caswell.
If I quit sleeping nights for ten more years I would never even hallucinate anything that diabolical, let alone suggest it as a plan to save the state money.
Caswell says the gift card idea wouldn’t save the state any money.
Ah. Well. I’m sorry I have to think of Bruce Caswell at all, and since I do, I think Bruce Caswell is a genuinely bad person.
Two things about the garden: at this stage, broccoli and cauliflower and chard and rhubarb are nearly interchangeable; and some of the new labels are bound to soon prove amusingly wrong.
Previously on Poor Impulse Control: Beasts.
This has been another edition of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom In My Living Room with your hosts Drusy and Sweetpea and a special appearance by Field Mouse. Thank you and good night.
While looking for something else last night, I found the recipe for bara a Bangladeshi co-worker wrote from me more than twenty years ago. I’m overjoyed! These little ~2 oz. lentil patties are moist, crisp, delicious and totally addicting. Eat bara with your fingers or a fork. They require no dipping sauce or condiment.
Bara (lentil cake)
Ingredients
Lentils – 1 lb. dry
Garlic – 1 small clove
Ginger – little piece
Onion – 1 big
Coriander leaves – a few
Cumin powder – 1 tsp.
Green pepper – 1 small
Oil
(Here in the West, coriander leaves are called cilantro.)
Cooking:
1. Soak in water lentils, garlic and ginger for 4 to 5 hours.
2. Drain the water.
3. Blend it to make a dough – shouldn’t be too soft.
4. Chop onion, coriander and green pepper.
5. Mix all these together with the dough.
6. Add also cumin powder.
7. Scoop them to fry in deep oil. (med hi temp)
Step 8 instructed me to bring some for my co-worker because he was HILARIOUS. Haven’t seen him in years. I still miss his wife’s cooking.
Photo by Bob Hosh.
So in my quest – the kind without teenage wizards – for really healthy food that tastes really good, I’ve been fussing with a cookie recipe. After about a mess o’ experimental batches – sometimes tried out on children dressed as teenage wizards – I like this one. The best thing about it is that a few of these cookies and a glass of milk or soymilk is pretty damn close nutritionally to that good breakfast you’re not eating.
Gingerbready oatmeal reasons to live
1 1/4 c. butter (2 1/2 sticks)
3/4 c. firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 c. molasses
1 egg
1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour
3 c. quick or old fashioned oats
1 tsp + a splash vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
1 tbsp ground dried orange peel
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
Some ridiculous combination of the following:
1/4 c-ish pignoli nuts
1/2 c.-ish raisins
3/4 c.ish craisins
3/4 c-ish dried cherries
1/2 c.-ish chocolate chips
1 tbsp finely diced crystallized ginger
Just for fun once or twice, I ground up a few tablespoons of candied Buddha hand and tossed that in. Awesome.
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Beat butter and sugars until fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Add combine flour, baking soda, salt and spices; mix well. Fold in oats, fruit and nuts.
Drop by rounded tablespoons onto silpat thingy. Bake 11-13 minutes. Cool a minute on cookie sheet; remove to wire rack.
Make these! I demand it!
Poor Impulse Control 