perfidy

Voting on Round 1 is now closed: Johno wins with his freight-train attack of pathetic dorkery abroad. Round 3 between Johno and Geeklethal is now open. See also Round 2.

One might see my invocation of a Funkadelic album cut in the title to this post as an attempt to hedge my bets and have it both ways: Johno - simultaneously dork/not dork. Unfortunately, I am indisputably a dork. A couple friends of mine in Pittsburgh, Helen and Jill (and you would always call them "HelenandJill," like "Hey, I'm Helen and this is my hetero life partner Silent Jill.") had an extensive alternate vocabulary (as if they were twins with their own language) that they would use in general conversation. For example, their word for the process by which you kill a few hours by maybe getting a cup of coffee then dropping in on the bookstore, then maybe heading down to see if anybody you know is at the Murray Avenue Grill, was "[to] der-de-der." As in, "I didn't do much today, just der-de-dered around before coming over here." Perhaps their best and most useful coinage was "The Dorking."

"The Dorking" is to be understood as a temporary condition something like "The Shining" except when you become afflicted with "The Dorking" you don't see dead sisters and rivers of blood. Instead, an otherwise well adjusted person does something incredibly dorky right on cue for a maximum number of people to be witness, preferably with an outcome of social disaster. Unreconstructed dorks are immune to "The Dorking," as to Be Dorked a person has to have developed a sense of social propriety and its attendant sense of shame. Say for example upon going to someone's house for the first time, you look through their CD collection only to find extensive holdings of Alanis Morrisette, Ace of Base and Shania Twain. A regular person might purse their lips and mentally catalog these people as deficient though well-meaning. That same person afflicted with The Dorking might start bitching audibly to his wife about how the producer-Svengali has completely ruined pop music, and why would anyone buy this crap and keep it in their house when those whores Glen Ballard and Mutt Lange already sleep on big piles of money, and what is with people anyway and the puppets that fart out crap music they seem to like? When will people get some damn taste? And then, of course, you turn around to find your former friend and soon-to-be former host standing there with a frozen smile as he or she tries to gauge just how big a dickhead you actually are. A total dork would not notice the frozen smile or the giant bruise on his arm where his wife pinched him numb, and blithely ask the host for a beer; someone afflicted with The Dorking would however have a moment of clarity in which they would have the urge to flee the room forever.

However, the line between Dork and The Dorking is not always clear. Take, for example someone on the way to a party with tons of hot weeeemin and a 50-gallon drum of highly alcoholic punch with the earnest intention of enjoying some time with one of said weeeemin and a good gallon of said punch. If they instead drink their allotted gallon only to spend the entire night shouting in a close friend's ear about Magic:The Gathering cards within easy earshot of many of the aforementioned hot weeeemin, are they a dork, or just afflicted with The Dorking?

Some cases, however, are beyond the pale. The foregoing incidents, though loosely autobiographical, have been modified for illustrative purposes. The following story, however, is true.

In 1995 I took a semester's trip to Cambridge, Enga-lind with two professors from the college I attended. The intention was to live in and study in Cambridge with other students from my school, and do as many cool things as possible within the larger sphere of Europe. While other students took long weekend trips to London, France, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Greece, I spent nearly $500 on Magic:The Gathering cards at a Cambridge game shop and chose to forego all the aforementioned trips (save one to Paris) because it was more important to me to try out my flashy new black-blue-white "Xerox" deck in a succession of Magic:The Gathering tournaments held at a Cambridge pub. Besides two days in Paris, the farthest I made it afield was a jaunt to an apartment on the outskirts of Cambridge to hang out with... you guessed it! A bunch of English Magic:The Gathering players! I missed out on a lot of stuff but, I gotta say. That deck of mine kicked hella ass.

Out-dork THAT, GeekLethal.

[wik]
Johno attacked with a classic 1-2 combo, a twofer that includes both gaming dork AND American dork abroad. This combination is potent, no question, and demonstrates that this opponent is serious and committed to this fight.

But any aggressive course of action assumes a level of risk for the attacker. By attacking along 2 axes, my opponent has effectively doubled the battlespace, and given me double the room to maneuver. Instead of trying to thwart both advances, I can concentrate my forces where I think they can prevail: American dork abroad. Here's a little something I call:

Remembrance of Ass Past

The Munich of 1992 was, so far as I was concerned, famous for 4 things: beer, big tents in which to drink beer, robust fraus to bring beer within the tents, and something about Nazis. Well, Nazis with beer.

Three friends and I had gone down Munich way to see one fella’s girlfriend. I don’t remember her name; I just remember her being astonishingly ugly and the rest of us referring to her as “the troll” behind his back and later, in front of him. Which was pretty far off the mark, to be fair, because she wasn’t at all large or scary or smelly. She was quite petite really, and acquainted with enough hygienic practices to pass as human in broader society. So not a troll for all that. More a sort of semi-goblin.

At any rate, we went down there for Oktoberfest and the troll was going to put us up in her flat in the city. Or so we thought. We made a day of partying at the fest and had a blast. That night, we decided we’d had enough when imitating the huge animatronic lion that had been erected near the entrance and mimicked drinking a mug of beer with a deep, growling “Loooowwwwenbrau” every 2 minutes was no longer as funny as it had been the previous 7,000 times. And we’d pretty much thrown up everywhere we cared to, so it was time to pack it in.

But, ol’ trolly didn’t really want us hanging around her flat after all- she wanted to be alone with Ed. She took us to a nearby hotel, a huge modern tower-type place, and introduced Phil and me to these friends of hers: um, whose names I don’t remember either. Turned out they were a couple of nice Scottish lasses, making a Deutschmark or two as chambermaids. Troll left us with them in the hotel lobby, and took Ed back to her lair. I don’t remember what became of our other friend Jose at that point; I believe he was passed out back at troll’s flat ‘cuz he wasn’t with Phil and me.

These chicks were fairly cute, one more so than the other, and they brought us back to their place, just a few subway stops away. As we walked into their apartment, I allowed myself to believe that maybe, just maybe, I’d get some ass. Play my cards right, put out my vibe, game, whatever-sure, this just might be my lucky night, heh heh heh. Then Phil passed out promptly upon arrival, leaving me with two heath honeys and a snowballing sense of greatness to come from the next few hours.

So we sat down to talk, we three, after a few snorts of whatever filthy rotgut they had close at hand: me on a bed, the two girls on kitchen chairs sort of facing me. Then I said something like, “So…two Scotch girls in Munich…” and didn’t get any more out than that. Now, I don’t even remember what I was going to say next. And it wouldn’t have mattered. Turns out they took umbrage with being referred to as “Scotch”- “SCOTCH YA DRINK!!” it was explained, rather too menacingly for my taste.

After that furor, I figured OK, let’s start again. Don’t blow this, this is a Penthouse letter waiting to happen. I asked something about what they missed about Scotland, and within the minute both of them were telling me what a “bloodthirsty bleeding fucking cunt” Margaret Thatcher was, and this person’s a fucking wanker, this one’s a fucking…I don’t know what, they had a town slang they used a lot which, coupled with their thick accents, allowed pretty much only variations of “fuck” to make it to my brain. This tirade lasted roughly 90 minutes.

By that point, I was past believing a Penthouse letter was in my future. I was thinking more about whether if these chicks killed me, it would be in the line of duty and my mom would get the insurance. I was looking toward the door and wondering whether I could make it out before these hags could catch me. Thing is, Phil was shorter than me but thicker, and it would take time to get him into a fireman’s carry and get him out. No way I’d make it out, and I couldn’t just leave him.

To buy time, I opted for the only topic I could think of that might be of interest to these ladies: weaponry. And boy, was it a hit. They wanted to know all about firing machine guns, and how heavy grenades are, and an M16’s recoil, and a thousand other things concerning the minutiae of deadly tools. It wasn’t Penthouse at all; it was somewhere between Soldier of Fortune and the Michelin Guide to Bavaria. With dawn, they rousted Phil and threw us out to get some sleep.

In short, gentle reader, I had two chicks to myself all night, all of us far from home in a foreign city, energetic, lonely, and young. And instead of being the king pimp rock star of the universe, I talked to them about guns all night.

A few days ago Johno and I had a brief email exchange touching on, among other topics, D&D, TSR vs GDW vs Steve Jackson Games products, and RPG character generation and its limitations. Afterward, it occurred to me that Johno might be a bigger dork than I had previously thought.

Now, I did not need any outside help recognizing my own dorktitude, but I sometimes have trouble recognizing it in others. And outside of demonstrable evidence to the contrary, I just sort of assumed I was the bigger of any random pair of dorks. But after this email exchange, I wondered, is that always the case? Which of us is the biggest dork?

And not who HAS the biggest dork, a contest I’d never be competitive in suffering as I do from the limitations characteristic of my ethnicity. It’s who IS the bigger dork.

It is a given that ALL the Ministers are dorks. We write content for a blog, a blog which was just updated and enspiffened, for starters. We fret whether we post enough, or too much. Our imagined Doomsday scenarios guide our purchasing choices at the grocery store, pharmacy, car dealer, and gun shop. We think robots are cool, zombies are scary, and spaceships are kick-ass.

But the question remains: who among us is the biggest dork?

To settle the question, Ministers will compose a post addressing a pastime, hobby, situation, or circumstance demonstrating knowledge of the subject, or the depths of the depraved dorkness you sank to in order to achieve a result. Opponent will counter with a [wik], comparing his own experiences with a similar subject or situation.

Once the post and [wik] are complete, readers will comment. Each match will be decided by readers’ comments; best of 3 moves on to title bout. The winner will be crowned Supreme Victor of the Universe, a suitably dorky title.

Fight cards are: Johno vs. Geeklethal; Ross vs. Buckethead.

The Ministry of Minor Perfidy: where the big winner is the biggest loser.

[wik] Johno vs. Geeklethal: Round 1, Round 2, Round 3.

[alsø wik] Johno vs. Buckethead: Round 1.

Did Diebold and a cabal of Republican state employees conspire to disenfranchise thousands of Ohio Democrats last November? Does even asking the question make me sound like a liberal moonbat?

What if I told you that noted pinko Commie and liberal firebrand Christopher Hitchens was the one who asked it?

I'm from Ohio, I know the depths of venality and stupidity to which its Republican leaders routinely descend, and even though the better angels of my nature encourage me to scoff at conspiracy-mongering as this, I also know one other thing: It is impossible to overestimate the overweening greed, piggishness and crapulence of Ohio's leadership. This bears further scrutiny and a public shaming of resident mouth-breather "Gubner" Bob Taft just on general principles. After that we can go after that creep George Voinovich too. George Voinovich: the only governer in US history to parlay his ruin of a state's economy and infrastructure into a successful bid for Senator.

[wik] Or is Hitch just shining us on?

I took Johno's test:

Official Survivor
Congratulations! You scored 75%!

Whether through ferocity or quickness, you made it out. You made the right choice most of the time, but you probably screwed up somewhere. Nobody's perfect, at least you're alive.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 99% on survivalpoints

Link: The Zombie Scenario Survivor Test written by ci8db4uok on Ok Cupid

My raw score was 75, compared to Johno's 73. Those two extra points made a big difference on the curve, I guess. Or, my zombie killing skills are just that obvious.

The funny thing is that I actually think about this stuff. Whenever I watch a zombie movie, or a horror movie, or even most action adventure flicks, it triggers a long process where I internally analyze the situation and what I would do. The more interesting the plot, the longer it takes. In my mental file cabinets, I have contingency plans for zombies, vampires, werewolves, terrorist attacks, being thrown back in time (several ways, and to different time periods), burglars, nuclear war, technology no longer working (thanks to a couple sf novels), everyone disappearing, pods taking over people's brains, soviet invasions, alien invasions (3), and for capturing a UFO should I be abducted.

Don't tell my wife, but I often buy things for my general purpose emergency kit based on the above scenarios. I justify the purchases for other reasons, but I know what they're for.

Wife: "Why do you need a shotgun?"
Me: "For the zombies."
Wife: "Why do you need four hundred rounds of ammunition?"
Me: "When the zombies come, there'll be lots of them."

You can see why that conversation is untenable. It went more like this:

Wife: "Why do you need a shotgun?"
Me: "For home defense, and I like shooting."
Wife: "Why do you need four hundred rounds of ammunition?"
Me: "It was on sale."

I convinced her to let me buy a couple cases of MREs on the argument that FEMA recommends that every family should have a disaster preparedness kit. Only really, it's a zombie emergency survival kit. Camping is a fun thing to do on the weekend. But camping gear always is handy in Zombie situations, too.

And I never travel without my aluminum baseball bat.

And no, I'm not crazy. I just have a finely developed sense of imagination and wonder. And don't tell my wife. It will make further additions to the survival kit more difficult. 

Apart from that HIV test you've been puttin' off, the Zombie Survival Test is the most important test you will ever take. The truth is, whether or not you have HIV, you can still be eaten by a zombie. Aside from the threat to humanity presented by the giant space robots who wish to enslave us, the coming zombie apocalypse is the most imminent peril facing civilization as we know it. Not Islamism. Not nuclear holocaust. Not arteriosclerosis. Not dread Chtulu and his minions. Zombies.

It is time for all Perfidy minions and multitudinous readers to find out: are you a survivor, or are you a spare*?

Find out here.

I for one will make it out alive. Are you coming with, or do I have to shoot you in the thigh?

Official Survivor
Congratulations! You scored 73%!

Whether through ferocity or quickness, you made it out. You made the right choice most of the time, but you probably screwed up somewhere. Nobody's perfect, at least you're alive.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 88% on survivalpoints

Link: The Zombie Scenario Survivor Test written by ci8db4uok on Ok Cupid

[wik] Minister Buckethead explains "the spare" thusly:

In any sufficiently large group of people, one person will be the spare. To determine who the spare is, imagine that the group is in this situation: You are being chased by brain eating zombies. They are gaining on you. You have a shotgun with one shell. The spare is the person you shoot in the leg so that the zombies stop to eat, allowing you to escape. Once consensus is reached that you are the spare, there is no appeal. If by chance your group is chased by zombies, and you sacrifice your spare, a new spare must be chosen.

[wik] Big time thanks to Michele.

As I noted on Friday, I like food, especially vegetarian food. I actually think I should clarify something just so I don't go misrepresentatin' myself badly enough that under the inevitable Congressional inquest I don't crumble like a thin chip in onion dip. There is a moral dimension to my not eating meat, in that although I don't have trouble with creatures dyin' for me to nosh on, factory farming is too gross and cruel for me to spend my money endorsing. If there is a starker picture of the dark side of capitalism than a factory chicken farm, I don't know it, and I don't want any truck with that.

Besides, ever since I cooked for the vegetarian co-op back in college all those year ago, I've been intrigued by the special challenges that a serious vegetarian cuisine presents. How do you create a large array of satisfying and nutritious dishes without resorting to any of the dead-animal products from stock to gelatin? Without the expedients of chicken stock, bacon and hambone, soups are a special challenge. Without dark beef broth and access to animal-fat based fonds, pan sauces are as well. The goal is not to replace the meat ingredients one for one, but to create dishes that are as satisfying in every dimension as those containing meat. This involves not just simple taste but also mouth-feel or slip, heartiness, depth of flavor, and texture as well. In the early days of meatless cuisine, this meant generous helpings of cheese, cream, and butter. Although this is still a good way to go (who besides vegans and the lactose intolerant don't like a nice pound of cheese on the plate?), it's also rather unhealthy as the basis of a diet and a bit of a cop-out besides.

As one might expect, not eating meat means that my wife and I tend to consume a lot of beans. In fact, nearly every week I make a bean dish that my wife and I can eat for lunch every day. In the summer, we substitute in grain-and-vegetable gratins or something like that, but nine months out of the year it's pretty much bean central around our house. As a result, I have gotten pretty good at making meatless bean dishes that manage to equal their, erm, meated counterparts without trying to replicate them. That can be hard.

The trouble with most vegetarian baked bean recipes is that they lack that special deliciousness that bacon provides. Many of them are too thin in flavor, or too acidic, or too sweet. I think the following recipe which I accidentally threw together during a power outage last winter fits the bill pretty well. It combines several different recipes I'd used in the past and also features my secret weapons: allspice and liquid smoke. And ketchup. Not that ketchup is particularly secret, but quality vegetarian cookbooks can't always quite shake the knit-your-own-yogurt ethos and therefore sometimes shy away from using prepared foods where they are clearly the best way to go.

So, below the cut, please find Not Exactly Boston Vegetarian Baked Beans

1 lb dry small white or navy beans (about 3 cups), sorted, rinsed and presoaked.
2 bay leaves
2 medium onions, chopped fine ( 1 1/2 to 2 cups)
1 small red bell pepper, chopped fine (about 1/2 cup)
2 stalks celery, chopped fine (about 1/2 cup)
4 cloves garlic, minced
2/3 cup molasses
1 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon prepared brown mustard
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
2-3 dashes liquid smoke
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons chili powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
vegetable oil
salt

Place beans in 10 cups water with bay leaves and 1 teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil and cook gently until tender. Remove bay leaves, drain, and reserve cooking liquid.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a bowl, mix molasses, ketchup, prepared mustard, vinegar, liquid smoke, and about 1 cup of the bean cooking liquid.

In a frying pan, sweat onion, peppers, celery and garlic in oil over medium heat until onion is translucent, about 10 minutes. Add salt, about a teaspoon. (Since this is a sweat, a tablespoon of water may be added to ensure that browning doesn’t happen.) When vegetables are soft, turn heat to high and add dry mustard, cumin, chili powder, cayenne, and allspice. Cook for about 3 minutes more, stirring frequently to prevent the spices burning.

In a baking dish, combine vegetable mixture and sauce with beans. Add more bean broth if the mixture is too dry. Cover and bake 1 1/2 hours. Taste for salt after 1/2 hour. If beans are too watery, uncover for last half hour of cooking time.

If beer weren't already mankind's greatest achievement, this puts it over the top.

If you're like me you like your steak with a little char on the outside and pink on the inside. And really, let's face it - who isn't like me? Trouble is, medical science has pretty well established that charred meat is carcinogenic. But guess what? Drinking beer with that steak cuts the amount of carcinogenic compounds produced during digestion by 75%.

Let's hear it for a steak and a beer! And then maybe a BJ too!

(Thanks to boing boing.)

I don't eat much meat. This isn't so much a moral choice (in that I'm not a vegetarian because I can't stand the idea of something suffering so I can live) as an aesthetic one. Let me explain. I do eat a vegetarian diet on a regular basis and most of my cooking is vegetarian cuisine. (Don't laugh - give me one hour and the right ingredients and I will make you forget there's no meat on that plate.) There are three main reasons I don't eat much meat: my ongoing effort to maintain my svelte womanly figure; the fact that I'm a cheap bastard and gram for gram vegetable protein is cheaper than animal protein if you are willing to spend a little time cooking it; and aesthetics. The first two are, I presume, relatively self-explanatory.

But what do I mean by aesthetics? I mean this: the chicken you get in the shrink-paks in the grocery store is rubbery and utterly flavorless, an insult to the very idea of chicken. Beef from the grocery store, though sometimes very good, is generally totally unexciting. Moreover, all the hormones and drugs they pump factory-farmed meat fulla probably isn't good for you. Now, before you go whipping off a reply comment telling me that I am pumped fulla shit peddling that alarmist tree-hugger pabulum, hear me out. We're all mammals. There is some circumstantial evidence that the "stuff" they use to get a chicken to market in seven weeks makes it into the meat, and therefore into your body. Now, beyond the whiff of "false but accurate" creepiness that such a notion carries with it, that's just not how I roll. I eat meat very rarely, and when I do, I want it to friggin' count. Growth accelerants, hormones, and antibiotics affect the quality of the meat, and I don't like to pay to eat crap food. I live on the seacoast and as a consequence I eat a lot of fish. I am lucky enough to live close enough to working seaports that I can get up early on Saturday, drive over the bridge, and buy a slab of Arctic char that four hours earlier was fighting for its life. That's living, I tell you. If I lived in Dallas, you can bet I'd be eating me some steak. Good food is a gift to the body and the soul.

So why is it so damn hard to find good chicken? I just had a delicious lunch of half a roasted chicken at one of Boston's best restaurants. The dark meat was gamy and just slightly bitter, and the white meat was mellow and rich. In other words, it *tasted like chicken*. Why did I have to spend way too much money to get chicken that *tasted like damn chicken*?

And why is it so damn hard to find good beef? Well... strike that. If you're lucky you can pick up a six dollar steak at the local grocery that will satisfy your omnivorous blood-lust, be tender and juicy, and taste faintly of what the cow ate. America does beef pretty well. But more likely, you will pay six bucks and end up with a strip of shoe leather. These days, when it's time to eat my thrice-a-year steak, I go to one of the local farms who raise cows and pick up something they've killed themselves. I usually end up paying $20, but I also usually end up passing out in a pleasure-coma with a big goofy smile on my face. Why is that so hard to achieve? Cows is cows!

I would go into a whole tirade abou tpork at this point and how it no longer tastes like anything at all and yet nobody seems to notice, like a blank canvas some bullshit artist pimps in a gallery for $5000 while black-clad anorexics coo and ahh about her bold use of negative space, but I think I've made my point.

In a nation that has perfected consistency in preparation (the Big Mac always tastes like a yummy Big Mac), why is it exceptional to find quality meat? Is it market forces? As someone who wants their meat to taste like, um, meat, am I in a tiny minority? Help me out here, before I go home to a dinner of Buffalo-style tofu (which is, I have to say, delicious).

As loyal readers know, my lovely wife Mrs. Buckethead is in a band. Dead Men's Hollow plays what they like to call 'Acoustic Americana,' a blend of bluegrass, old school country, blues and gospel. Yesterday, the little brown Santa, UPS, delivered several hundred pounds worth of their debut, full-length CD. It's called Forever True:

So, in honor of this momentous occasion in the history of music, here are some links:

• The Band's webpage.
• A really good song.
• Their schedule.

DMH has come up in the world quite a bit over the last year or so. Despite losing half the band at one point, a psycho significant other (she actually said, "I'm not trying to be Yoko Ono") and the Bob the base player feeding his hand into a wood splitter, they have persevered. The vocal harmonies are tighter, sweeter and better than ever. And now the hard work is paying off - they're getting good reviews, playing bigger venues, and generally kicking ass. At first, in the early days, I have to admit that I went to the shows because it was my wife's band. But I have to say that even were she not my wife, right now I'd still really dig this music. Check it out.
 

Daniel Gross has an interesting take on the NHL's current trouble. Last week Bain Capital in conjunction with Game Plan International offered to buy the entire NHL for a few billion buckaroos. The upshot is that hockey currently is behaving like a classic distressed industry so that it's ripe for a leveraged buyout (LBO). Gross prognosticates that if this scheme goes through, Bain/GPI will manage to save hockey by doing what LBO firms do - in this case cutting a third of the teams and imposing strict salary caps. Fair enough - I agree that hockey has overextended itself by aggressively expanding into uproven markets (Florida? The Carolinas?). However, Gross undercuts the attractiveness of his proposal at the end by admitting that hockey's new corporate overlords would nix teams in failing and shrinking markets, e.g. Buffalo and Pittsburgh.

That's the problem. The National Hockey League is not the National Hockey League without the Buffalo Sabres and the Pittsburgh Penguins. I also happen to think it's not a National Hockey League without the Hartford Whalers or the Minnesota North Stars, but that's milk long since spilt. The downside of corporate maneuvers like LBOs (or even outright sales) is that institutional memory and identity is devalued to the vanishing point. One reason so many mergers fail is because the two cultures do not mix and the wrong people (mid-level menial drones with long memories) are let go, leaving the company identity (and filing system!) adrift and floundering. A major part of sport is sentiment, and I cannot expect that a league run by Bain Capital - even if they are based in hockey-mad Boston - will pay any attention whatsoever to the noble and hereditary fan bases for the Pittsburgh Penguins or Buffalo Sabres, or even small-market/perpetual loser teams from the Original Six like the Red Wings or the Blackhawks.