Author: Simon

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Transferable Skills…of Death!

There are two ways to turn an extracurricular or hobby into a chore: make it competitive, or do it as part of a job. Myself, I never bought into the idea that if you do something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. Bullshit. Once something becomes a critical source of revenue, failure can no longer be an option. And sometimes I just want to do something for fun. I don’t want to compare my performance to every single person out there who also participates in the same activity.

And at the school level especially, it can quickly become a personal confidence-killer.

So it was that the kid lost interest in music. Because in the affluent Centerville, there’s always a Korean kid forced into practicing to exhaustion on threats of violence. Even during my shitty Lubbock public education there was that kid: the quiet, broken shell. He played multiple instruments and was always on 1st clarinet with kids 2 years his senior, and solved every math problem on the board. Had he played trumpet, I would have given up, too.

But now the kid is in archery. And she’s pretty good, and enjoys it. She doesn’t have to practice to the point of misery just to keep up, or be forced to compete.

And from my viewpoint, I say: when the world ends, the zombies won’t care that she can play the violin, but they will care when she can shoot them in the head.

Maybe a goofy way to make the point, but I’ve always viewed martial skills as having more practical application beyond the classroom anyway. And by “classroom” I mean the academy, because nothing that involves a weapon will ever be integrated into the American school system. No – taxes should be spent on learning sportsball.

My grievances with the Karen-catering school system aside, here’s the kid completing her introductory training.

And going freestyle.

And as a dad who also enjoys the sport, I’m glad I can take some interest finally in her activities. We might even have something to bond with now! So long as she can stand being seen in public with her dad. I’d better start practicing.

–Simon

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Easement Acres

With my post hole digger out from the squirrel centrifuge, I finally got around to installing one of my Christmas presents.

What’s in a Name?

Now that the estate has an official name, it needed a declarative marker. So Liz bought a sign.

Which I then affixed to a plywood backer, painted for contrast.

And then erected in the gardens, alongside the pipeline easement.

Snarky, but in good humor.

–Simon

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Anything You Can Do, Sushi Edition

Okay, so I probably can’t make sushi as well as a professional, but compared to what’s on offer here in Dayton, I can make a damn good attempt.

The trouble with sushi here is multi-fold, and it’s hard to discern the misinformation surrounding a cultural food that isn’t my own. Here are some of the contradictory bits:

Sushi needs fresh fish

Fresh fish doesn’t have any taste

Fresh fish can give you parasites

Freezing the fish will kill the parasites

Freezing the fish destroys its subtleties

Freezing the fish enhances texture

Bluefin tuna is the best

Tuna is one of the blander fish for sushi

It’s all in the rice

If it’s all in the rice, why is sashimi so popular?

Nori adds the flavor

If nori adds the flavor, why are California rolls so popular?

California rolls still have nori

Not always

Cooked fish has more and complex flavor

Cooked fish overwhelms the subtleties of the total flavor package

Says who?

And on and on…

The real problem, I think, isn’t so much that we’re landlocked (if you don’t count access via the Mississippi/Ohio/Miami rivers), but that we’re part of the Midwest. And while Midwesterners certainly know how to fry their freshwater fish, they seem confused with the concepts of seafood. And exotic spice in general. So while the local sushi chefs could probably turn out more flavorful rolls, they don’t because there’s no demand. And they can get away with it.

So with the bar set so low, and prices set so insanely high, we had always considered making our own. And finally, we made the attempt.

First off, the rolling mat. I was not interested in hand-scrubbing a porous bamboo traditional version, so I picked up this silicon one.

Then the fish. Tuna is standard, so that was the choice for our first attempt. I froze it in my blast freezer for a day (USDA says 15 hours at -31F is the minimum requirement to kill parasites).

Followed by a proper workstation setup. The rice was cooked with 1T sugar, 2T rice vinegar, and 2T sugar, according to Alton Brown’s recipe.

And some sliced cucumber and cream cheese. The dog cookies were not included.

Some careful placement and rolling.

And voila! Okay, so it took a few attempts, but this was my best one.

The taste? Pretty close to those store packages. I think there’s some opportunity to get more flavor into the rice, and I can certainly experiment with adjusted levels of (actually good) soy sauce, instead of the dyed salt water restaurants like to give out.

In conclusion, yes we can make something comparable to Dayton-quality sushi rolls (or makizushi, specifically, before the pedants call me out). And I could probably tweak things to make it better. The real cost though is in prep and labor. The execution was a pain. We’ll probably try it again sometime, but I’m not in any rush. Bland sushi it is for the foreseeable future.

–Simon

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Calvin and Hobbes – Publication Edits, 3

This one I found not because I was diligently auditing the dialog (I was, in fact, distracting myself from a rather boring conference call), but because the dialog itself didn’t make immediate sense to me and my brain screeched to a halt. The joke was lost on me, and having read every strip multiple times over decades, I’m familiar with Watterson’s humor. It was enough to not slip past me:

November 25, 1988

From The Complete Calvin and Hobbes collection. I took this photo.
From gocomics.com: https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1988/11/25

A second read and it became obvious that this editorial change was much bigger. I would even go so far as to say it changes the entire joke. Here’s my take, paraphrasing and reading between the lines:

Original version:

Calvin: I’m a cranky kid.

Mom: I don’t care.

Calvin: If you were truly the woman who gave birth to me, you would care a lot more than you do.

Mom: If I weren’t truly the woman who gave birth to you, then I wouldn’t have kept you this long.

Calvin: I still don’t believe you’re the woman who gave birth to me. You purchased me.

Revised version:

Calvin: I’m a cranky kid.

Mom: I don’t care.

Calvin: If you were qualified to be a mother in the first place, you would care a lot more than you do.

Mom: If I weren’t qualified to be a mother, then I wouldn’t have kept you this long.

Calvin: I still don’t believe you’re qualified to be a mother. I want to see documentation that you’re certified to be one.

It’s sort of a similar punchline, but a pretty significant change. It’s modernizing the joke (as in, our growing obsession with professional certifications). As I previously mentioned in…

Calvin and Hobbes – Publication Edits, 1

…kids and families often “joked” about the inherent “legitimacy” of children. In fact, that’s still done today in biological nuclear families with much frequency. But again, the editors must have considered that insensitive to adopted children/broken families/divorced families/remarried families and whatever any other form of non-traditional families out there that they preferred to update the text.

And again, I’ll accuse them of trying to edit history by changing art to be more palatable to a new audience.

–Simon

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Hop Damn!

Hipidy Hopidy

The hops are blooming! I hadn’t planned to do any brewing, but I’m getting curious. Maybe I’ll soak some in a cheap beer and see how they impact flavor.

For now though, they’re just cool.

–Simon