Spring Brizzle for the Biz Bizzle

Its finally approaching the time to return to Minneapolis from the evils of Buffalo for at least a week. We are leaving manana after my course with Joan so we are shooting to arrive in the TC Thursday afternoon-ish. That does of course mean a long night of dizniving without any cigarettes, but we can probably pull it off assuming that we both get some sleep in the backseat during the drive. We have wedding shizzle to do and people to see and Katie is going to New Orleans at the end of the week, but hopefully it will be somewhat of a relaxing experience, at least there are zero seminars.

Besides that I don't have alot to say right now, but never fear. I am staying up for most to all of the evening in order to make sure that I will be able to sleep in the afternoon on the first driving segment. In accordance with that, and in recognition of the fact that I can never guaruntee any frequency of updates while back in the hometizzle I will try to comment on several things over the night.

To begin with I would like to comment on sprinkles. I think we can pretty clearly delineate two different varieties of sprinkles without any dispute. In the first instance you've got "Crystaline Sprinkles." These are the, usually red and green, little flakes of semi-translucent colored sugar you will see covering entire Christmas cookies. You take your frosted sugar cookie and cover the cookie with these things. Besides cookies and cakes I have never really seen these sprinkles in use anywhere. The other category is of course "Jimmy-style Sprinkles." By this we are obviously referring to the small cyllindrical sprinkles which have much more volume than the crystaline ones. I have certainly seen these tasty things on cookies and cakes but they are also prominent features of ice cream sundaes and the like. Now, you have the multicolored variety, which are probably the most popular, but the jimmy-sprinkles are the first to introduce the concept of flavor to the sprinkle-verse. I admit that I may pay a bit more attention to sprinkles than the average fan of America's Next Top Model (Shandi power!!) but I have had a couple different kinds. Regardless, I am fairly certain that almost everyone has at least enjoyed the choco-tastic variety. When Katie and I went to the Capital debate tournament we hit up this ice-cream joint after round 2 on Friday night. I had this phat death-by-chocolate motherfucker which, while I had admittedly had better desserts by this name, was quite good. It was chocolate ice cream, chocolate cake, chocolate fudge, chocolate sauce, chocolate whipped cream, and chocolate sprinkles. While there are two of these defintive categories of sprinkleosity, there are some things that vary from almost exactly sprinkles to only somewhat related to the sprinkle family. Lets start with those which are especially close to the sprinkle fam. There are the little balls of multicolored sprinkle things. They don't fit in with either the tubular jimmy style or the flat crystaline. They would get their own except for two facts: 1) they are the only ones of their type 2) they are more closely related to the metallic silver balls. These are wondeful little things, you can put them on top of the Christmas tree cookies, but you can't put too many of them on any one cookie. They are edible, don't get me wrong, but you don't want a mouthful of em. I guess its an arbitrary distinction but I would put the round multi-colored sprinkles with the metallic candies and once that is made we are just a hop skip and a jump away from the red cinammon candies which everyone loves. Here you are talking about sprinkle accessories, plain and simple. You cannot make an argument that we are still in sprinkle land. Just because you can put them on a cookie don't make them sprinkles.

I wish I could ruminate on sprinkles further, and between only you and I, I think I could, but I simply don't want to type it any further. Sit down and try to write a paper on sprinkles. Its not easy, it takes alot of fucking work. Its much easier to relay with your friends stories about sprinkles, your fond memories of when your parents scolded you for over-frosting the cookies and then covering them in alternating layers of red and green so that the cinammon ones you attempted to put at the points of the tree couldn't even find a bit of frosting to grip in. An alternate excercise, write a paper about your favorite french fries of all time. It ain' that easy, believe me, I have tried, briefly, but still tried. Now, go to a french fry loving compadre or compadrita and have a dialogue. It will take now time at all and stories you can't believe stick in your head which are somehow, maybe only distantly, but somehow related to french fries, will pop into your head. Its incredible.

So I had tivoed this episode of the Sopranos which I am currently watching and I am now recognizing what Jon Stewart's joke last night concerned. He was talking about bears in New Jersey and I now get the joke. Its one of very few moments where I thought I fully understood something and just didn't think it was funny. Most of the time I think I can tell when people are referencing something that I simply don't have knowledge of and its a weird fucking experience when you retroactively get the joke, especially when you thought it was one you had already gotten. I think TiVo sort of does this to people, since Pete pulled the same thing on me a few weeks ago with the "Who would win a fight between a caveman and an astronaut." I heard the question one night, discussed it with him the next, and it wasn't until the next conversation when I found out the origin. I mean I had it on the DVR, I was gonna watch it when I got a chance, I just hadn't gotten one. Fucking A. I don't even have any more examples, so this discussion is going nowhere. Hopefully you know what I am talking about, its just odd.

So I love the Daily Show, I stick by my arguments in favor of the intelligence of the writers and the skill Jon Stewart has in executing those jokes. Nonetheless, I am really frightened by fairly noticeable move to the right over recent weeks. I think that pretty much, since the Newsweek cover we have seen Jon Stewart have like 7 right fucking wing guests. More importantly, Jon is actively attempting to work in, at least 5 times an interview, the "subtle" explanation that the show is tolerant towards different political viewpoints, you can't just charaterize republicans as evil and stupid and fascist. Notably, these interviews have been preceeded by 20 minutes of jokes which indicate exactly that Bush is a fucking numnuts and not a well-intentioned man. I understand that you are trying to capitalize on this serge in popularity and capture an audience which can be older and more moderate to conservative and also to pull in even more of the young crowd. I guess this is the right strategy as a program, I think it will work. People who loved the show when the interview were either with Michael Moore or were just Jon Stewart telling republicans that they were fascist will still watch because its still good and maybe you will catch a couple of those people who were thrown off by overtly radical leftism. Still, I don't think this is what he people in charge (Stewart and the lead writers) believe, I don't think it is as funny as it can be, and I don't think it is as positive a political force as it could be. Katie gave me a stat the other day that some significant majority of young people (18-34) get their daily political news from The Daily Show, I think that means that they should take what they had and run with it. I still love the self-depricating humor, he wouldn't quite be John Stewart without it, but recognize that you are not just shit on a minor basic cable channel. This is big time shit, it is big time shit and it is telling the fucking truth. Katie and I were having a discussion about this last night, and I have not yet fully been convinced that the American public is beyond the point where, if we argue to them, if we explain to them what we mean, they aren't smart enough to understand. Maybe I am just a disnenfranchised Mac graduate, I mean, I know I am a disenfranchised Mac grad, but it might be more than that. I don't feel we're trying.

I don't think that democrats, the Greens, the left, etc. are doing what we need to do. People, important people, should be on TV everyday, explaining to people why it is that we shouldn't (to steal a phrase from Bob Mould's blog) "vivissect the contitution" to codify discriminatory policies. Instead of getting no closer to San Francisco then Washington State and explaining why we just "don't support this ammendment" wouldn't you like to see John Kerry standing next to the Mayor of San Francisco. Shouldn't we be telling people that in 30 years their children and grandchildren will be taught about this day the same way we learned about the forced integration of (was it Alabama or Mississippi) universities in the 1960s. This guy is doing what the national guard did those days. Escorting a person to class, granting them a marriage license, they just aren't that far off. This is not even to mention the relation of McCarthyism to Gitmo and Vietnam to Iraq. There are things that people will really easily understand. We're fucking right, that is all there is to it, and I, at least for now, believe that people will understand if we tell them. Regardless, I want to see someone try, or believe that we have tried and it just didn't work, before I give up entirely.

Oh my God. So the President of the RNC who was on the Daily Show tonight (Tuesday, reruns on Wednesday all day) named Ed Gillespie is freaking hilarious. Not on purpose, I don't think, but still hilarious. He reminds me of the public defender from My Cousin Vinnie who represents the non-Karate Kid one of the defendents before he switches over to Vinnie. The dude who stuttuers and asks fucking awful questions, like Dan Specht giving a cross-ex (oh, much love and props to the Specht) except skinny and Southern and tall. Andy almost got his thorax punctured by a pair of deer antlers in that kid's basement one night, and it was either right before or after that when we had some fucked up capture the flag game in the middle of the night, with no lights on, that at two seperate points involved throwing miniature containers of applesauce and burnt bags of microwave popcorn. I couldn't possibly begin to explain to you how any of those events occurred, or how many hours of clean-up were required the next morning, but it still strikes me in the sense of "good times, good times."

I wonder what percentage of the population, when asked, would be able to off the top of their head, name their favorite large cat. I don't mean like, could they think about it for a couple seconds and come up with some random large cat, but that they actively have one. I personally do, its the puma. I couldn't explain why, but the puma is a hella cute cat. Its got those funky ears and really sleek fur. Don't get me wrong, the mountain lion, the jaguar, the tiger, the lion, the leopard, the cheetah, these are all awesome cats. Nonetheless, I prefer the puma. I also prefer, out of all the members of the owl kingdom, the great Horned variety. They are all good birds, arctic white ones, little tiny barn owls, but you can't really compete with the head turning horns-which-are-actually-made-out-of-feather-having qualities of the Great Horned varieties. Mad props.

I have been trying to figure out a way to make mini-donuts, I mean real fair quality min-donuts. Not the uber-mini-donuts, mind you, the ones they serve at the Tom Thumb booth on the corner of Judson at the MN State Fair, since those are unmatched, but I think I should be able to make donuts as good as the ones you can occassionally by from a trailer in the Cub parking lot, or parked on people's random driveways accross Snelling from the entrance to the fair. Don't diss these donuts hombre, you could do a hella lot worse for a warm sugary breakfast on a brisk St. Paul morning, but once you are already close enough to smell the grease, you might as well just take the natural gas powered tram on over to the am 1500 booth, next to the Minnesota Independent Republican booth, right by the Ayd Mill ride, which I have actually never been on, and wait in line at one of up to 12 individual donut making machine stations. I think a bag is still only like 2.50 and if you won't pay 20-some cents per bite-size sugary grease trap something is wrong wit yizooo.

Why is it that we call chicken strips so many different fucking things. Can't we come up with a basic name for this product, chicken strips, chicken planks, chicken tenders, chicken sticks, chicken filet sections, etc. You don't see this kind of thing happen with mozzerella sticks. They are never called cheese deebie-weebies or anything. What is it about chicken that makes people think you can name it whatever the fuck you please. What exactly is done in order to make popcorn chicken, by the way. Is it just like little strops of chicken breast which are breaded and fried or are we talking about processed and extruded chicken balls. Hella tasty either way, maybe especially so if we are talking about a product which can be accurately characterized as chicken balls.

I don't know what happened while I was watching TV that resulted in the screen displaying "rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr492", since I don't think anything had touched the computer while I was at the fridge. I guess that r and 4 are really near to each other, so if something had been sitting on the keyboard in that area it would make sense, but I am not sure where the 9 and 2 fit in. I mean, technically 9 and 2 fit in 5 units after and 2 units before 4, respecitively.

So Katie got her Game Cube not long ago and with it Mario Party 5, which, if you have not had the opportunity to participate in Mario Parties 1-4, is a video board game. You've got the dice cubes and all the stuff you would imagine to be associated with a Mario Bros themed video board game, but also including a fuckload of mini-games that are exactly what the name implies. I will admit that having played like 5 games recently I like it more than I ever thought I could. Notably, each of these games takes between 1 and a half and 2 full fucking hours. I mean, when you play a session of Mario Kart it also takes that long, but this is non stop, nutso as they say.

Alright, I am simply too tired at this point to really continue writing anything. I am going to watch the end of Jason Schwartzman's new TV show, hope it was worth ditching Phantom Planet to work with SUPERSTAR!! More from the Twin Citays over the next few days.

Peace,

MB-K