The struggle is real.
Angry Man #19
Let me end this post on a positive note. I love you all.
Thank you for reading my blogs for the last two years. Thank you. Thank you.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
My cell phone stinks to high heaven. It is superb at doing random things it wants to do. Doing what I want to do . . .
not so much.
I want a cell phone to do the following:
1) I want it to work all the time.
2) I want it to work all the time.
3) I want it to work all the time.
In particular, I DON”T WANT IT TO DO:
1) Switch to RTT mode when I’m talking. I have never nor will I ever want to text people while I’m talking to them.
2) Switch to random screens when I’m trying to do something else, anything else. This happens all the time.
3) Prevent me from hanging up after a misdial. As of now, the only way to stop this is to hang up and restart.
4) Freeze. This happens all the times. Again, as of now, the only way to stop this is to hang up and restart.
5) Randomly disconnect.
In particular, I WANT IT TO DO:
1) I want it to dial correctly the first time everytime.
2) Make it easier to see if I have voice mail.
3) Make texting easy. Making it easier to type the key I want, not one near it.
4) Make using Google Maps easy.
5) Nothing else. If my cell phone just doesn’t do the five things I want it not to do and only the four things I do want it to do, I shall be ecstatic. I prefer a relatively inexpensive phone, but if the only workable cell phone is one that’s expensive, then please tell that too. My current phone makes me so miserable.
Please help. I’m so miserable. Thank you,
Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D. (but not with cell phones)
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
Worries and cares besiege us from all sides. Numerous must-do-now projects clamor for our attention. Our nerves are on edge around the clock. We grow ever more irritable. We need time to calm down, time to think unhurried thoughts, time to dwell on loved ones, or even just time to clear mind and think of nothing. Just be. But we know this special time is impossible. There is no place to do this, thanks to cell phones, where we can’t be contacted by our bosses. If we work for ourselves at home, we know that when we relax we really could be working on some project. Our computer beckons, beckons, and soon enough we obey. We are back at work getting stressed and more stressed.
If only there were a place where we could meditate unmolested. A place where even if the world contacts us we can legitimately say, “Sorry, but I won’t be able to do anything at all for some hours. Sorry.”
Where is this paradise of meditation?
Your local DMV. Just get in line, for anything really, and you can kiss the outside world goodbye for hours. Now find your quiet place inside your mind and let your thoughts roam free.
The DMV, recharging souls for nearly a century.
Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
INGREDIENTS – POTATOES
½ small white onion (½ small onion more later)
2½ pounds russet or brown potatoes
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (additional ¼ cup vegetable oil later)
½ tablespoon achiote powder
3 green onions
¼ teaspoon salt (¼ teaspoon more later)
1 cup queso blanco, queso fresco, quesillo, or mozzarella cheese
¼ cup vegetable oil (or ¼ cup per batch)
INGREDIENTS – SALSA DE MANI
1¼ cups milk
½ small white onion (See? I told you it would show up again.)
1 cup smooth peanut butter
¼ teaspoon salt
SPECIAL UTENSIL
potato masher
Serves 4. Takes 2 hours.
PREPARATION – POTATOES
Dice ½ small white onion. Peel potatoes. Cut each potato into eight pieces. Put potato pieces into large pot. Add enough water to cover potato bits. Bring water to boil on high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer for about 20 minutes or until potato is tender. Remove potatoes and let cool.
While potatoes and then cool, add 2 tablespoons oil, onion, and achiote powder to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Drain potatoes Mash potatoes with potato masher. Mince green onions. Add white onion, green onion, and salt to mashed potatoes. Mix with fork until well blended.
Form mashed-potato mix into 16 balls. Insert 1 tablespoon queso blanco into center of each potato ball. Close hole in potato ball and flatten slightly to make llapingachos. Add ¼ cup oil and llapingachos to pan. Heat oil using low-medium heat. Do not let llapingachos touch. Sauté for 7 minutes or until golden brown. Gently turn over once. Repeat for each batch.
PREPARATION – SALSA DE MANI
While potatoes cook and then cool, slice ½ small white onion into 4 pieces. Add this white onion and milk to pan. Simmer on low for 10 minutes. Stir frequently to keep milk from burning. Remove onion and discard. Add peanut butter and salt. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir frequently. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes or until peanut-butter sauce, salsa de mani thickens. Spread warm salsa de mani over llapingachos.
TIDBITS
1) Ever get deja vu? Like you read this recipe some twenty years ago? Or maybe you knew tonight’s dinner would be pot roast? Okay, maybe you knew that because today is Tuesday and you always have pot roast on Tuesday. But what about the time you saw Spiffy the Squirrel win the Boston Marathon and only you had known he’d win because you somehow had seen it happen a week ago?
2) Anagram scientists know now that deja vu is not merely a feeling but instead that alga, the stuff that grows on the surface on ponds, are trying to communicate to us from the future. It’s true! Fishermen, golfers, and politicians will tell you the same. Look at the name of this dish, Llapingachos” That word is an anagram for “alga phonics.”
3) In 2032, internet providers, locked in ever increasing competition search looked frantically for faster and faster ways of data transmission. On April 2nd , Timothy “Timothy” Harris, Ph.D and CEO. of Harris Labs dropped his cell phone in an alga-ridden pond. To his surprise, it still dried out instantly! It still worked! It even worked 38% faster than before! Timmy’s brain swirled with exclamations marks. He’d win a Nobel Prize! Then his phone stopped transmitting. The screen stayed on, but the wallpaper switched to pond scum. Dr. Harris slapped his forehead. But, of course, the alga now in his phone had dissolved and replaced its the precious metals. The phone would now only send forth images and concepts the alga understood.
4) Indeed the alga, relatively dim witted due to their single-cell existence and, to be frank, lack of any secondary education to speak of, couldn’t comprehend even the simplest text messages such, “lol” or “smh.” Clearly, alga needed to up their linguistic skills. But how to do this?
5) Timothy had another “aha” moment. Didn’t there, wasn’t there, a program called “Hooked on PhonicsTM? Did they ever make a version for alga? They had! It was still out there on EBayTM. Would this program work on specific single-celled organisms? It would! Harris Labs’ revolutionary cell phones took the communication world by storm. However, Dr. Harris feared industrial espionage and never wrote down the specifics of his invention. But how would he remember to process to make his phones? After all, he was scatter-brained after all.
6) Simple. For in 2033, he had a flash of insight. Could phonics-enabled alga send messages back in time to people’s brains if they were first coded in anagrams? Yes, yes, it proved to be so! Who knew? All you had to receive this message was to walk by a stagnant pond. So yes, whenever you experience deja vu, it is really coming from alga way into the future.
7) “Remember, alga phonics,” thought Dr. Harris. What was an anagram for “alga phonics?” Why no other than the Ecuadorian dish, llapingachos! The great scientist fed this word to his alga who keep forwarding the recipe back in time to us. This is why we keep hankering for this recipe.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
What is the most annoying aspect of our lives? It is, of course, spam on our computers. Spam is broken down into three basic types: ViagraTM, ways to lengthen your penis, and offers to inherit money from an ex-Nigerian dictator. All of this is only really useful to the kin of Nigerian dictators who are trying to finance penis-enhancement operations. And how many of us fit that description?
How about eat the spammers? Only four problems occur to me. First cannibalism in illegal in all fifty states. (I’m reasonably sure there’s religious exemption for this.) Second, how do we find the spammers? Third. what wine goes with grilled spammer? Merlot? Zinfandel? There are no books for this.
So, cannibalism is out. I never had much stomach for it anyway. I therefore propose a fee on all e-mail. Now hold your horses partner, let me finish. It would only be a small fee, say one cent per 100 e-mail recipients. If you only sent e-mail to five people each day, your annual fee would come to 18c. Affordable, you bet.
But what about the billions of dollars that would flow into the Federal Coffers from this levy? I’m glad you asked. Here are my suggestions.
1) Reduce the Federal deficit.
2) Bacon and chocolate for everyone.
3) Reduce taxes.
4) Subsidize the CowboyMetricsTM Society. (Helping out the statistically challenged kids of cowboys everywhere.)
5) Bacon and chocolate for everyone.
6) Lower the price of cell-phone plans.
7) Add gourmet lunches to all school cafeterias.
8) Jail cells for all those who don’t make their choices before getting to the fast-food counters.
9) Jail cells for all those who block the aisles in supermarkets with their carts.
10) Teaching quilt making to all the people who soon be in our prisons.
11) Develop computers that never freeze.
12) Bacon and chocolate for everyone.
– Paul De Lancey, Dr. Economics
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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