Overdrift

I'm supposed to post about some chocolate covered grapes, chocolate napoleons, and lemon-lime madeleines. In the meantime though, check it:

Overdrift

This is quite possibly the greatest video ever made.

"...we're all dinos over here. Everyone drifts all the time, it's impossible to drive straight!"

DUKE OUT!

うまく行った(Umaku Itta)

Sometimes things go really smoothly, like how I just managed to advertise and sell all of my furniture to a new tenant taking over my current apartment in less than 6 hours beginning to end. But that's no fun. Stupidity is more fun.

Prospective: Hi, I'm Lauren...
Luke: Hi, I'm Luke.
Prospective: ...
Luke: ...
Prospective: I'm calling about the studio loft you advertised?
Luke: Ah yes sure, you have any questions?
Prospective: What's the deal?
Luke: Excuse me? I'm not sure what you mean.
Prospective: What's the deal with the layout? It's a 1 bedroom?
Luke: It's a studio actually...
Prospective: So there are no bedrooms?
Luke: *Goes through long explanation of layout*
Prospective: Well my daughter and I are looking for a place so that sounds ok.
Luke: Yeah, I like this place a lot.
Prospective: ...are you Canadian?
Luke: Excuse me??
Prospective: Are you from Canada?
Luke: No...uh...I'm Chinese
Prospective: Oh, well you have an accent...
Luke: Huh. That's interesting. Are you American?
Prospective: Yes...
Luke: Because you has stupidity!
Prospective: ...
Luke: *punches prospective in the face*

So obviously not all of that happened but you get the drift. Oddly enough, I always though I had an accent. Not a Chinese accent exactly but a little extra bit of enunciation and a curl of the tongue that has their roots in the fact that English, despite being native to me now, was still a learned language for me. So while all my American friends assume that I was born in the States and tell me I don't have an accent at all, I can still tell when I listen to myself what kind of an "accent" I have. But Canadian eh? I don't know what to think aboot that.

Intentional, or is it?

Headlines: Saw these at the NYT, (or did I?):

US Open Blog: US Behind, or Has World Caught Up?

A double-perspective: It works fine except what do we have here?

Information is temporarily unavailable.

The World: This War Is Not Like the Others — or Is It?

This post: It is finished, or is it?

Vichyssoise and Blanquette de Veau

Vichyssoise! It's supposed to be cold (Holy Batman reference!).

Didn't take a picture of the mise this time but caught the ingredients lounging there all unawares:

It's a nice and simple recipe. If you like onions and potatoes (hash browns anyone?) then you like this soup. It's creamier, it's a bit more work, but it's basically onion and potato soup. Sweat the white part of the leaks, cut the potatoes into cubes, and then dump in with a bunch of chicken stock. Cook until potatoes are mushy, blend, strain, add cream and nutmeg (I forgot the nutmeg), salt to taste, chill. Garnish with some chives and you get:

Nice and easy. Mine came out slightly thick (too many potatoes) but the great thing is you can thin out the soup to the desired texture at the blending stage. Just add more stock! OK, that was easy. On to the Blanquette de Veau.

According to Bourdain, it's all about white. Everything should be white. Well ok, mushrooms won't be white no matter how you cook'em but the sauce should be white so it'll cover parts of the mushrooms. Mise below:

Pearl onions and the button mushrooms will both be covered with water and boiled until the water's gone with a pat (about a tablespoon) of butter. The big onion, celery, carrot, and the bouquet garni (the white cheesecloth package down there) go in to a big pot with all the veal. Shoulder, cut into 2 inch squares. Once the veal is cooked (about 2 hours) and all the scum skimmed off, you'll be left with fragrant veal soup. Yum!

Next step is the sauce: make a roux by blending flour into butter after the butter has been heated and the foam subsided. Don't burn the flour like I did! It'll brown the sauce and then Bourdain will get mad at you and you don't want an obnoxious bastard like him making snarky comments about your roux. He chewed me out RIGHT as my flour hit the butter.

Once the roux is made, mix in a bit of the veal stock slowly to emulsify. Continue mixing and adding in the liquid until it's all blended. Cook until it starts to thicken (not too much!). At that point salt and pepper to taste and add in the pearl onions and mushrooms. Cook for about 5-8 minutes.

When ready to serve, take a bit of the hot sauce and mix an egg yolk and juice from half a lemon into it and then reincorporate back into the sauce. Put some nice white rice on the plate (in a ball if you follow Bourdain's pictures or in whatever fancy schmancy shape you like), some pieces of veal on the plate, and then drizzle with sauce. The pearl onions should melt like a ball of sweet goodness in your mouth and the veal should be fork tender. If you burnt the roux like I did it'll look like this:

Yup. Not quite white. But close. And now I know. Which is half the (culinary) battle. And if also, like me, you made way too many portions for one person, then this is what you'll be eating for the next couple of nights (not that it's a bad thing):

OK, so a bit heavy on the starch. Potato soup, bread, and rice. We've got some protein from the veal and the vegetables? Uhm...onions and mushrooms TOTALLY count. I'll eat more vegetables at other meals anyway.

And yes, two balls of rice look kinda like boobies. You think I didn't notice? Hu hu hu. "Boobies".

Error Messages

A lot of VBScripting recently has me seeing all sorts of vague error messages and I've got a thought: why can't they be less vague? For one thing, they're kind of stoic: "End Expected at line 148." Descriptive, but not much fun. For another thing, the syntactical error messages don't always tell you what's really wrong. If you name a function "ILikeBigButts(boolean BrotherLies)" and you accidentally invoke it with "ILikeBadonkadonk( true )" you'll get something talking about a type mismatch.

See that word? Mismatch, meaning that there are two things to match. But the truth of the matter is, there's no match to miss. The ILikeBadonkadonk function simply doesn't exist. Yes, I suppose nothing as a type does not match something but such existential queries probably don't need to be illustrated in the bowels of VBScript.

I suggest we update the error messages to be more colorful. Instead of "Type Mismatch," why not "That Shit Ain't Nowhere, Foo!" Or for "End Expected" we could have "Waiting for Armageddon" (Waiting for Armagodot...). For that matter, every other interface has the concept of "styles" down now, we should be able to customize development environments with error message styles. Personally, I'd go for "Dangerous Ganster Rapper Running from the Law". That'll really put the urgency into those messages.

Adverb Spelling Disease

I saw an insult on the Yahoo Finance boards today and I lawled. You would too if somebody insulted you like this. Imagine somebody getting all up in your face. He's serious and aggressive and he's about to call you some names, you can just feel it. The rage he exudes is palpable and he's going to berate you verbally somethin' fierce. His massive chest heaves up in a great intake of air and he calls you a

"..miserably systic [sic] fibrosis!"

What do you do? What can you do when faced with perfect, beautiful nonsense? In three words we've got an adverb used as an adjective, misspelling, and the misappropriation of a disease as an insult. That sounds like a pretty good idea for an insult formula actually. Let me have a go!

I think you should shut up you...

• Pathetically Pulmonairy Embolism!
• Stupidly Renul Failure!
• Moronically Subdurel Hematoma!
• Quickly Hemerajic Fever!
• Vicariously Sikul Sell Anemia!

Just more proof for John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

Futures Made of Virtual Insanity

I've been just obsessed with this today. I don't know why but I get on to these indefinite loops. The Russian National Anthem was one. And the latest involves Jamiroquai's Virtual Insanity and, to some extent, Jay Kay. He's a pretty unique performer and Virtual Insanity is a great piece of work. The video is great as well and is a nice visual puzzle for those who like these kinds of things. I'm going to get all multimedia on you guys:


There's a making of video on youtube that explains the movements.

The other thing is I think I have a man-crush on Jay Kay. He's so cute! He's got that hat habit which is much more a geek than a fashion statement. Some of them are pretty ugly but rarely are they boring. He also did an adorable interview on Top Gear a while back that stole my heart for a few reasons: he acts like a happy kid, he set one of the top times for the first generation of Stars in a Reasonably Priced Car, and he's a car man himself. He sounds fantastic live, he's got real musical talent, and he's got these distinct dance moves.

It strikes me that Maroon 5 sounds a little like him sometimes. Compare "Sunday Morning" to Virtual Insanity. But as catchy as Maroon 5 is sometimes, Jay Kay seems like a more distinct and interesting artist. OK, sorry for the false alarm on the gaydar, but his image is cute!

Which is why I wonder why he has to keep punching photographers. Chill man! Ignore them and go back home then take a drive in your RS4, or RS6, or DB5, or F355, or the mesmerizing Miura, or the flying F40 AND the F50, or the freaking Flying Spur, or the dangerous Diablo, or the possible Pope Mobile, or the epic Enzo. My point is that I like your cars. Can I come for a ride? Better yet you keep punching photographers and I'll drive your cars. That way everyone's happy.