Down Up

My blog has become stale.  Let me sprinkle some salt flakes on it to liven it up a bit.  Put it in some moist air to get the starches separated.  Let it breathe a bit.  Ok shake it out, smooth the wrinkles and here we go.

I write to you from a dark place tonight.  A series of events are conspiring to prevent me from reaping the rewards of my new employment.  Namely bumps in the road.  In some cases literally.  So as I hit a flat tyre along the road of temporary poverty, let’s take our minds off the trouble with some happier thoughts.

The world is great!  We are a healthy, long living, ethnically diverse people on this wonderful planet!  Generally speaking we are at peace most of the time, and help one another.  We fly in giant artificial winged creatures, and we can connect to anyone in the world nearly instantly with the help of our science’s technology.  We are on average, a smarter people now than we ever have been, and we have even gone up into space.  In fact, we got tired of space!  We came back down because we are more interesting than anything going on up there!  We are a progressive people!  The world, since time imemorial moves pretty clearly on an axis from highly conservative to a more progressive state, slowly guaranteeing the rights of the underprivileged one stepping stone at a time.  There is less indentured servitude in the world right now than there has ever been in the past!  We are coming to terms with the effects of modern society on the physicality of planet earth!  Every day, more people become energy conscious, and make genuine efforts to secure the health of the planet for the generations yet to come.  People, on the whole, are better now than they have been and that new standard gives us even higher expectations for the future.  Which we will rise to meet.  I’m sure of it.

So let’s all take a step back from oil spills and racist celebrities to just pat ourselves on the back for a job well done.  Maybe get a sip of coffee and a biscuit.  Its easy to forget you are entitled to one lunch hour and two fifteen minute breaks when you look at the workload we still have to get through.

You hang in there also, my friend.

~HLC

This ever happen to you?

I will go to the tap for a glass of water.  When my cup is full, instead of reaching over and turning the tap off, on rare occasion I hit the light switch instead.  Then my cup overfills.  In the dark.  Leaving me to contemplate.  Like a signal gets crossed in my head that the light switch will turn off the water.  I invite science to find the cause and cure of this peculiarity.

I started new work today.  The first thing to do in an analytical chemistry position, regardless of anything else, is to familiarize yourself with the procedures of your new fathercompany.  As such my day was spent in a cubicle, reading endless jargon and taking tests on computers that are so old they have a tutorial on them for their mouses.My dear, I hope that you are thinking about me.

~HLC

PS:  Wordpress has a ‘like’ button now.  I’m just sayin.

The waiting game

I’m waiting this two weeks out and letting my mind come around to some things:

1)  I may have some preferences, skill, and knowledge in the kitchen, but I am at a loss at all these foodies on the internet.  Hooboy.  I’ve never seen so many articles devoted to interesting shapes they can make with a side of bacon.  The internet has made the recipe book almost completely useless, and so to fill the void of actually decent content we end up with (ed. note:  I was intending to place a link to the “This is why you’re fat” tumblr, but apparently a Time featured blog can’t make it past a year in this economy) what they call food pornography.  And these foodies are specifically amateur; professional cooks don’t blog and upload photos of every goddam mincemeat bacon souffle they make (bacon is always key).  They have fucking people to feed.  Grow up foodies!  The World (arguably) has space in it for just one Alton Brown!

2)  I am officially moving up a tax bracket with this upcoming employment opportunity.  Out of poverty.  Which means I have to start paying off all the loans i made out over the years.  Which means I basically wont make any money yet.  To another year in poverty!

3)  I rode my bike last night all the way down the Chicago lake shore.  I wore my lightweight egyptian cotton tunic shirt in the humid midwestern air.  Well more like halfway down the shore, I didn’t have bus fare to get back so I had to turn around when I thought I had gone far enough (Vincent Freeman would certainly have had my number).  Anyway I found what appeared to be a music festival near Lincoln Park, and it was getting dark so I couldn’t really see that well but  it seemed like a spanish speaking metal or maybe ska type band playing (at a certain point it ceases to matter).  It was as godawful as you can imagine.  T’was a fine excursion, and I hope the summer brings more like it.

Good night.  You’ve made all the difference just by being there,

~HLC

P.S. My apologies to Alton Brown, who is in fact a professional.  Professional actor and terrible person.  Not a chef.  Or any kind of cooking professional.  Honestly someone just throw him off a cliff.

P.P.S. Gracing the blogosphere with not one but two blogs is another dear acquaintance from the old days.  One of which is a movie review site?  Good form.

Another placeholder post

So even by my own low standards I have been lax on writing things in this weblog.  So let’s see what the next twenty minutes brings us.

I had the pleasure of receiving a job offer the other day.  A real means of employment.  As I told my dear mother, Grown-up money.  And I still have this ruddy little old job.  So I’m going to quit it.  I’ve never had to give a two weeks notice with definite plans lined up afterward, so my usual anxiety is nonexistent.  I will be able to do some serious slacking off and checking out.  The anticipation is delicious.

There seem to be some new negotiations as to my future living arrangements, between my self and two of my cohorts.  So there may be yet another moving date in my future.  Which is fine.  I hate standing still, as so far this post is full of minor changes going on in the tale of this hero.

Six minutes left and I will regale you with some television I watched lately.  LEXX is a pretty wacky sci-fi program from last decade, and it speaks well for a genre that has fallen out of favour with me.  I got into Chuck this season, and then right back out of it.  I’ve never seen a show with such a strong middle and terrible beginning and end of the season.  Burn notice is finally wearing me down.  I don’t know how many times we will see the same pattern of events.

Alright I must leave you now.

~HLC

On the drink of collapse

My colleagues and friends, we have occasion to celebrate.  The very laws of nature are at my beck and call.  Man tries in all his endeavours to reach the peaks I now enjoy, and just in time for summer too.

It turns out it all so devlishly simple.  I’ve found a process that purifies a certain alcohol in to a neutral liquor.  A neutral liquor which needs no re-distillation, dilution, or concentration. From there a genuine plethora of possibilities exist.  My choice?  I gathered the appropriate reagents to create that most rewarding of all the everyman’s tinctures, gin.  In short, I turned a cheap, impure, disgusting vodka into a refreshing liquid breeze with nothing more than my own ingenuity and some cheesecloth.  These are heady times indeed.  If one can make their own gin, why then one can set any number of flavors to their own craft liquors, and well then that does it.  Also, one cannot live in Chicago’s storied history and not make your own alcohol.  No bootleg whiskey yet but I’m also not in the business of blinding myself.

Quality Testing:

1.  Appearance.  Not quite there.  It’s a tad green/yellow, like very slightly off putting water.  I was aware of this during the process, and have an idea of which component did this.  All in all still a work in progress.

2.  Odor.  By jove, that’s it!  Takes me back to days of yore.  And war.

3.  Taste.  Now that I’ve got my senses stirring, it’s time to go the distance.  The gin drinkers stand-by is the martini.  I prefer mine a tad below as dry as possible.  I’m looking for a true telling of the gin’s flavor profile.  Simple coat of vermouth on the glass.  Used a thin line of lemon zest over the customary onion.  Bombs away.  Hmmm.  Yes tha’s th’real thing.  In fact, I would put it above the cheaper stuff.  In your mouth it is almost like the parent, tasteless, but on the way down, the bouquet really hits but not in the stingy way, as the generic stuff does, but just a crisp feeling that you get all over.

Well enough fawning over my own concoctions.  If it were enough for me to declare success right here and now I would, but I need the approval of others.  Need it. So come on and drink with me.  I owe you one anyway.

I said I would and I am

I found the harlot that decided she was too good for everyone else (Madame please excuse my anger).  Turns out she took photos for Time Out magazine.  Let us take a look shall we?  (Time Out magazine, if you see this know I am a better photographer than this classy lady and you can reach me at arwinnqhawkhauser@gmail.com I will take quality photos of anything you want to put in front of me.  I have samples.)

http://www3.timeoutny.com/chicago/blog/out-and-about/2010/04/free-energy-at-beauty-bar-photo-gallery/

Of the many many many more photos taken, 9 were featured.  A goodly amount.  Most of the photos feature a lead singer as washed out as his vintage sweatshirt.  None of the photos capture anywhere near the actual lighting conditions, which other live venue blogs don’t seem to have trouble doing.

I don’t mean to be an old curmudgeon.  But this person was directly blocking my view of the band and I was there first.  And this is the product.  Cheap shots I could have taken with my point-and-shoot.  Next time try to get a high angle, or at the least TRY ANOTHER LOCATION!!

~HLC

PS: Those gents in the ties were pretty awesome drunkards who knew all the words and if I were in a band, they are the ones who would make it worth it for me.

Harumph! Old man in the room! He wants to complain!

Alright, I’ve given myself a few moments to calm down, but I saw something last night that infuriated me, and it infuriated me in a way that made me realize I am old.

This issue involves a concert I attended last evening.  It was close quaters, intimate, featuring a rather (dare I say?) blogworthy band, Free Energy.  I was with my mate, Dogs Playing Poker, and we were in a relatively good vantage.  However, these charlatans crowded up in front of us, pointing at their enormous digital SLR cameras as if that gave them the right to stand in front, on virtue of wanting to take photographs.  My friend was very dismayed at the audacity these clear amateurs (more on that in moment) had in storming in front, and it did not help that they were young attractive women.  Probably blog writers too, what a rotten bunch.

So there’s that.  What honestly steamed me over was that on top of their brazen lack of etiquette, they were rank amateurs at the pictures they were taking.  Their flashes overwhelmed the subjects; any body appeared too white on a black background.  One of them sat down and took nothing but low angle shots of the lead singer, whose hair was long a floppy and she never got the face.  Ever.  I know because I was right behind her and could see every one of the 400 or so shots, 300 of which were deleted immediately, on site.

Now I’m certainly not a practised photographer, but I know the basic elements of composition and took a class or two with my old Minolta 35mm back in the day (probably among the last trained analog camera operators prior to the rise of DSLR).  Digital cameras allow such quantity over quality that it is absurd.  Normally this is fine, and can help the budding cash-strapped enthusiast, but when you are stuck behind some self-important hack of a photographer that is literally snapping a flash off every 6 seconds (bear in mind here the flash was pointed upwards, directly at my face, in a effort to, i don’t know, wash the images out even more) then maybe you will wistfully recall a simpler time when you were limited to 24 frames on a single roll of Kodachrome, and had to make them count.  If you are going to imposition your fellow audience members, at least do it for a good reason.

I’ll keep an eye out for those photos, and amend this post to mock them properly if they ever show up on the internet.

Buttonholes

Sometimes, you know when a new post is happening.  Sometimes it happens all by itself.  Sometimes you must make it happen.  This is one of those times.

When I last spoke up, I had finally arrived as a new transplant in Chicago, United States.  I had secured income, and had more or less converted to my new land.  Well, the months have dragged along, fall corrupted into winter, the thermometer receded (Fahrenheit thermometer mind you), winter broke its grasp finally about mid-March and things have been cool, quiet, and, uh, covalent for the last month.

My job is of the QC analyst.  I’ll not bore you with the details, I know most haven’t the slightest desire to hear about high pressure liquid chromatography, but suffice it to say it is a job I am more than cut out for.  My real problem is the commute.  I am forced, in a city known for its elevated public transport system, to drive more than an hour each way every day.  I think about the gas I spend doing this, and the miles I put on my car, and it makes me uncomfortable with my own personal outlook on self-sufficiency and environmental impact.  But we are a country of capitalists, not fringe pinko leftist hippies, and those $$$$DOLLAZ$$$$ must be made.  So until I can gather the components to take the next step in my life, ‘is where I’ll be.

I’ve been here only a few months, and have seen a fairly regular cast of house-guests and etc passing through this wonderland.  Some stay a while, some a short while.  Good times are always had with company.  There was a passing fancy, and an interminable case of the blues.  And that brings us to the present.  Spring is here.  I go outside when I can.

And I have watched some TV.  God have I watched TV.

I hope this helps, Gregory,

~HLC

TV Spotlight: Treme

Ok first off, I haven’t written many TV posts.  Or posts.  Not apologizing.  Anyway I’ll catch you up real quick.  I have television on broadcast again.  There’s a station here that shows The Twilight Zone every night right before I go to bed.  Spooky!  Tonight’s was “Number 12 Looks Just Like You” which is basically the plot of the movie Gattaca (this is patently false).  Also Star Trek for two hours prior to that.  I’m just kidding I don’t watch Star Trek.

I watched the entirety of David Simon’s epic The Wire a few months back.  We can all agree on that.  I watched it.  I’ll not piss in your brain with my inane fawning over that series.

So now Simon has picked up shop and left the town of his upbringing for another downtrodden locale of the early American 2000s.  Will he bring the same success with him?  My sources say…. maybe?

look at me, covering a new show

I won’t lie.  The pilot episode of Treme is pretty entertaining, but not exactly groundbreaking.  It takes some stock characters and sets them in the post-apocalyptic reality of post-Katrina New Orleans.  Actually most of them are the same basic character of grizzled musician.  Or grizzled college professor.  Or grizzled chef.  Whatever, that city’s been through a lot, and everyone that came back just wants to rebuild and they MEAN IT.  The problem/unproblem with this is that that is exactly how The Wire began, with a hum-drum plot which it ever so slowly subverts into a gritty reality that transcended the crime genre.  We can only hope this show transcends the post-hurricane genre.  So now I have these expectations that this is where that show will go.  But, you know, it never works quite as well the second time as it did the first.

Bunk plays the bone.  Lester dresses like a chicken.  John Goodman uses a slightly lesser known usage of the word ‘canard.’  And the world will wait and see.

Eat:  Hmmmmm a drama set in New Orleans?  Obviously we should go as bland as possible.  How about some baked chicken thighs (no butter, just water and salt basted) with boiled peas and lemon sorbet.  That will get you in the mood.

I also will give a shout-out to Rory here.  Possibly best houseguest of 2010?  He made my television work by buying a vital component.

The life

I once attempted a post in cockney slang, but found it too impossible.  How they do it is past me.

How are you?  Old Howard has had a bit of the candle burning at both ends these last few.  There’s plenty to keep my mind occupied, for certain.  We reach another milestone of 2010 this weekend, the ever-depressing return to daylight savings.  I’m not certain right now as to whether it is 3:30 or 4:30 in the morning, but honestly, either is pretty ragged when you get right down to it.  But we’ll get by.  I hope you do too.

Stay Forever Young,

~HLC