Urbane Homestudding TM

is MINE bitches!!!

Do you hear me?!?

Also, Urban Homewreaking, Ermine Homeschooling, and Unctious Bedwetting...so everyone out there better keep their f**king hands off of these or you will hear from my lawyers, you scum-sucking bastards!!!

http://www.alternet.org/food/149977/can_you_trademark_urban_homesteading



Unbelievable.

John Ludi at Work: One Way Train, Part 1.

This is the first in a series of 3 videos that will show how the artistic process works in my particular little brain. It starts by having a basic structure to work around and build upon, which can be nothing more that a simple drum part or bass/guitar/keyboard line...but in this case is one of my older tunes that I like to play around with as it always presents a nice canvas to splatter odd ideas over.

Oh yes...this song has nothing to do with trains...it's actually about hypocrisy, world-weariness, and suicidal ideation...but "one way train" flowed better than "one way rickshaw" or "one way dirigible"...even though the whole "train" motif is disgustingly overused. There should be a law.

One of the saddest things I've read recently.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/disillusioned-99er-shares-his-disappointment-american-dream

Not much of a comment I can, or really should, make about this...except to say that this is only the beginning, and that this poor sad, sick man at the end of his rope is someone we are going to get to know very well, very soon...in fact, some of us may become him.

I wish peace upon Mark...and I wish the blackest of hells upon the suited monsters who helped make his life what it was...and I hope they too feel pain before they too fall.

Two Excellent Documentaries

For your troubled viewing pleasure:


http://www.ethosthemovie.com

http://www.isuma.tv/inuit-knowledge-and-climate-change

I recommend them highly!

Clueless in Davos.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet one of the most powerful people on the planet:

http://networkedblogs.com/dGVwI


From the reports that I have read out of Davos and from watching interviews like these, it is becoming ever clearer to me that the world of the rich and powerful is becoming increasingly detached from the world the rest of us live in.  The almost-boundless optimism of this man leaves me stunned.

Either Jamie is a great actor, or he is an incredibly two-dimensional thinker and completely isolated from anything resembling a larger view of reality outside of the world of international banking and high finance.

I think it's the latter, and I think people like this are in for a big surprise.

What the hell did I just make? Volume 1, Number 1.

When I am not cowering in my bunker waiting for the entire planet to explode (or recording songs about waiting for the entire world to explode) , I actually have a few hobbies, one of the being cooking.

I am not one for following recipes, for the most part.  There are times when I may crack open a cookbook for something specific, but by and large my cooking is almost pure improvisation.  Usually what it amounts to is looking in the fridge and in the pantry and saying "hmmm...6 totally unrelated items that are past their expiration date...what would they all taste like together?"

Now this may SOUND kind of appalling, but for the most part what comes out of this process tends to taste OK, and has not killed any of the brave souls who have ever sampled my creations.

I have decided to add some of my more successful creations to this here blog...just for the hell of it.  There may be other vegetarian cooks who could play around with some of these ideas and not die in an ER somewhere.

Also, it may be fun for people who read these recipes (especially the more exotic ones) to have a go at telling me that what I came up with purely at random actually closely resembles a real dish made by real chefs.

Stranger things HAVE happened.


So this is my first documentation of something I have been doing since I was 8 years old (when my drunk single parent decided I was old enough to feed myself).

This is vaguely like an Indian dish (as I love Indian food with a passion)...but WHAT Indian dish is beyond me:

Here's what it looks like:

And here are the ingredients:

1 1/2 cups water
2 Tablespoons oil
1/2 Tablespoon salt
1/2 Teaspoon turmeric
1/2 Teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 Teaspoon fenugreek powder
1 Teaspoon cumin powder
1 Teaspoon coriander powder
1/4 Teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 cup (homemade) paneer
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
1 1/2 cups chopped okra
1/2 cup lamb's quarters (it's like spinach)

I blended all the spices with the water and oil, boiled it for a couple minutes, turned it to medium and added the okra and lamb's quarters (I had boiled and frozen them prior, so I just need to thaw them in the liquid).

Once the veggies were thawed, I decided to add the milk and the paneer...and just for the hell of it I scrambled an egg and spread it throughout the mixture, like one would with egg drop soup.

This I let simmer covered for a few minutes and then let it sit until it was eating temperature.

The results?  Holy crap, it was tasty!  I wish I had made a lot more of it.  It's very nice served on top of a slice of naan (also homemade).

So what the hell did I just make?

Financial Meltdown Was 'Avoidable

File under: "oh, really?"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/25/financial-meltdown-was-av_n_813989.html

It may be somewhere in the report, but the article does not mention that, in addition to complacency and ineptitude, this was also driven by brazen, insane, foam-at-the-mouth, drool-on-your-pants GREED...as well as by corruption, cronyism, and a system that offers an open revolving door between TBTF banks, the Fed, the government, and the agencies that are supposed to regulate such behaviors.

No...kinda doubt that will make the report...they probably just want to say that the players made a widdle boo-boo and bwoke your widdle economy and they feel reeeeealy bad about it and they promise not to do it again.