Certainly Was A Treat To Me

Mosey on over to Old Timey, Dammit for my latest musical experiment. Another old jug band standard, "The Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives To Me".

Man, you'd think after all this time I'd be able to play the kazoo with some kind of skill. Sigh. This is why we outsourced all that tricky stuff to the miscellaneous section. Anyway, it's short, and was kind of fun, so enjoy!

Them There's Good Eatin'!

So, it turns out you can get good barbeque in Madison. Smoky Jon's isn't the Dinosaur, but we were pleasantly surprised.

We got the first sign that it might be as good as it claimed was when we pulled up outside. It's out on Packers Ave, which is a 4-lane divided highway through an industrial neighborhood. (The Oscar Meyer plant is maybe half a mile from there.) The place itself is half of an old warehouse. The other half seems to be an auto repair shop or something. Anyway, sketchy enough to presage good barbeque. Stepping inside, the decor is more "log-cabin bunkhouse" than "dimly-lit biker den", but they were playing some good blues over the PA. There was also a roll of paper towels on each table. So far, so good.

I got a combo platter with a third of a rack of ribs and a smoked brisket sandwich, with fries and chili on the side. Anita got a spicy chicken sandwich with fries and cole slaw. It's St. Louis-style barbeque, which seems to mean a fairly sweet tomato-based sauce with a lot of vinegar in it. It was pretty darn good. I have only good things to say about the meat. Very clearly slow-smoked and more than tender enough to slice with the plastic knife. The chili was short on beans, oddly enough, and could really have used some cheese, but it was passable. We'll be headed back, that's for certain.

Anyway, I hope y'all are having a nice holiday weekend. We've been pretty successful in avoiding the Holiday Cheer this season, thank goodness. I should have time to record some music tomorrow (since there's nothing else to do), so stay tuned...

"Literature"

Well, Anita has been frozen into Watertown for the night (freezing rain storm!), so I find myself at something of a loss. Hence, an anecdote:

With the new "The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe" movie out, the subject of fantasy came up recently. I haven't seen the movie, and don't really plan to. I have fondish memories of the BBC series, particularly "The Silver Chair" with Tom Baker as the marshwiggle, but I always thought C.S. Lewis' stuff was a little weak. I said as much, and there was some debate on what were the really good fantasy novels out there.

Madeline L'Engle and the venerable Dr. Tolkein were bandied about, and somebody or other expressed a lingering fondness for The Black Cauldron. Watership Down was dismissed as "not really fantasy" by some, which seems silly to me. The most "grown-up" books anyone mentioned were the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, which I despised, and Robert Jordan's ongoing epic, which I've avoided. My list of favorites met with blank looks, for the most part, but I suppose I should expect that by now.

In no particular order:

•Last Call by Tim Powers - although, frankly, everything he's written since The Anubis Gates has been brilliant, and I really, really liked both Expiration Date and On Stranger Tides. If only he didn't write novels so dang slowly.

•Perdido Street Station by China Mieville - stunningly inventive, reading this was like being punched in the gut repeatedly by H.P. Lovecraft and Karl Marx while watching a Terry Gilliam movie

•Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke - only came out last year, but is on my list of favorites already: set in the 1800's, the magic in this book has a lot of neat texture to it

•Rats And Gargoyles by Mary Gentle - possibly the most obscure thing on this list, but well worthwhile. She describes what she writes as "Hermetic science fiction", so obscurity may be what she's aiming for...

•The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll - I think everyone's favorite Jonathan Carroll novel is the first one they read. This one is mine.

I also mentioned Pratchett, who is reliably entertaining, and Neil Gaiman, who none of them had heard of. Startling revelation, that. I held off on bringing up old creakers like Mervyn Peake and E.R.R. Eddison and slowly extracted myself from the conversation. They probably wouldn't be interested in hearing about Jeffrey Barlough, the mutant lovechild of H.P. Lovecraft and Charles Dickens, anyway.

So, um, read anything interesting lately?

Free at last!

Semester's obligations have been completed and they don't seem to be on the verge of booting me out yet. I also seem to have a Rhodospirillum mutant. Three weeks to get some work done in peace...

Ye Ancient Order Of Chicken-Flingers

After discovering the Historic Tale Construction Kit I am terribly tempted to recreate the entire tale of Arnold von Winkelreid in tapestry form. However, I have resisted (if only because there aren't any images of beer for the time-travelling Vikings to drink), and will only subject you to the above sad tale of a desperate man in desperate times.

Meme attack!

Well, I wouldn't normally post one of these, but this is far and away the best internet quiz I've seen this year. So, what biological molecule are you?


You are DNA. You're a smart person, and you appear
incredibly complex to people who don't know
you. You're incomparably full of information,
and most of it is useless.


Which Biological Molecule Are You?
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