Notes from a texan chili tastingThe notes are from an inexperienced Chili taster named Frank, who was visiting Texas from the East Coast:
Frank: "Recently, I was honored to be selected as a judge at a chili cook-off. The original person called in sick at the last moment and I happened to be standing there at the judge's table asking for directions to the Budweiser truck, when the call came in. I was assured by the other two judges (Native Texans) that the chili wouldn't be all that spicy and, besides, they told me I could have free beer during the tasting, so I accepted".
Here are the scorecards from the event:
Chili # 1 Mike's Maniac Mobster Monster Chili

Judge # 1 -- A little too heavy on the tomato. Amusing kick.

Judge # 2 -- Nice, smooth tomato flavor. Very mild.

Judge # 3 -- (Frank) Holy nuts
, what the hell is this stuff? You could remove dried paint from your driveway. Took me two beers to put the flames out. I hope that's the worst one. These Texans are crazy.

Chili # 2 Arthur's Afterburner Chili

Judge # 1 -- Smoky, with a hint of pork. Slight jalapeno tang.

Judge # 2 -- Exciting BBQ flavor, needs more peppers to be taken seriously.

Judge # 3 -- Keep this out of the reach of children. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to taste besides pain. I had to wave off two people who wanted to give me the Heimlich maneuver. They had to rush in more beer when they saw the look on my face.

Chili # 3 Fred's Famous Burn Down the Barn Chili

Judge # 1 -- Excellent firehouse chili. Great kick. Needs more beans.

Judge # 2 -- A bean less chili, a bit salty, good use of peppers.

Judge # 3 -- Call the EPA. I've located a uranium spill. My nose feels like I have been snorting Drano. Everyone knows the routine by now. Get me more beer before I ignite. Barmaid pounded me on the back, now my backbone is in the front part of my chest. I'm getting sh it-faced from all of the beer.

Chili # 4 Bubba's Black Magic

Judge # 1 -- Black bean chili with almost no spice. Disappointing.

Judge # 2 -- Hint of lime in the black beans. Good side dish for fish or other mild foods, not much of a chili.

Judge # 3 -- I felt something scraping across my tongue, but was unable to taste it. Is it possible to burn out taste buds? Sally, the barmaid, was standing behind me with fresh refills. That 300-lb. b itch is starting to look HOT...just like this nuclear waste I'm eating! Is chili an aphrodisiac?

Chili # 5 Linda's Legal Lip Remover

Judge # 1 -- Meaty, strong chili. Cayenne peppers freshly ground, adding considerable kick. Very impressive.

Judge # 2 -- Chili using shredded beef, could use more tomato. Must admit the cayenne peppers make a strong statement.

Judge # 3 -- My ears are ringing, sweat is pouring off my forehead and I can no longer focus my eyes. I farted and four people behind me needed paramedics. The contestant seemed offended when I told her that her chili had given me brain damage. Sally saved my tongue from bleeding by pouring beer directly on it from the pitcher. I wonder if I'm burning my lips off. It really pisses me off that the other judges asked me to stop screaming. Screw those rednecks. > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >

Chili # 6 Vera's Very Vegetarian Variety

Judge # 1 -- Thin yet bold vegetarian variety chili. Good balance of spices and peppers.

Judge # 2 -- The best yet. Aggressive use of peppers, onions, and garlic. Superb.

Judge # 3 -- My intestines are now a straight pipe filled with gaseous, sulfuric flames. I sh it myself when I farted and I'm worried it will eat through the chair. No one seems inclined to stand behind me except that s lut Sally. She must be kinkier than I thought. Can't feel my lips anymore. I need to wipe my @ss with a snow cone.

Chili # 7 Susan's Screaming Sensation Chili

Judge # 1 -- A mediocre chili with too much reliance on canned peppers.

Judge # 2 -- Ho hum, tastes as if the chef literally threw in a can of chili peppers at the last moment. I should take note that I am worried about Judge #3. He appears to be in a bit of distress as he is cursing uncontrollably.

Judge # 3 -- You could put a grenade in my mouth, pull the pin, and I wouldn't feel a thing. I've lost sight in one eye, and the world sounds like it is made of rushing water. My shirt is covered with chili, which slid unnoticed out of my mouth. My pants are full of lava like nuts
to match my shirt. At least during the autopsy, they'll know what killed me. I've decided to stop breathing, its too painful. Screw it; I'm not getting any oxygen anyway. If I need air, I'll just suck it in through the 4-inch hole in my stomach.

Chili # 8 Tommy's Toe-Nail Curling Chili

Judge # 1 -- The perfect ending, this is a nice blend chili. Not too bold but spicy enough to declare its existence.

Judge # 2 -- This final entry is a good, balance chili. Neither mild nor hot. Sorry to see that most of it was lost when Judge # 3 passed out, fell over and pulled the chili pot down on top of himself. Not sure if he's going to make it. Poor dude, wonder how he'd have reacted to really hot chili.

Interesting that even this hidebound paragon of journalistic tepidity is weighing in on Bush's Big Lie re WMD. Will this go anywhere? What is the alt press saying?

"Hey I can see my house from up here" (on the mountaintop that is)

Much ooohing and aahing over the 360 degree view from everest, cool site Mike!

Care to join me on the mountaintop?

From our Light at the End of the Tunnel dept. comes a hint that God may exist after all: The Montreal Canadien have announced the hiring of Habs legend and front office wizard Bob Gainey as their new GM. When Gainey retired from the ice and went behind the bench with the Minnesota North Stars he took them to the Stanley Cup finals in his first year as a coach. Following that, as coach and GM he built up a team that has been an NHL power for several seasons in Dallas. His tranfer back to the Canadiens is a very, very good thing. Just wait until the year after next. Assuming there is no strike next season (a major assumption admittedly) the Habs will be a force to be reckoned with in two years as the lazy old-timer squad they have now retire and the young stars of the AHL-leading Hamilton Bulldogs graduate to the NHL team.

I will not make gratuitous Anne of Green Gables jokes, I won't I won't I won't



Typo in newspaper article links P.E.I. tourism to phone sex line



SUMMERSIDE, P.E.I. (CP) - A misprint in a U.S. newspaper article on Prince Edward Island has caused some red faces in the province's tourism industry.

A 1-888 number mentioned in a recent Boston Globe article was inadvertently changed to a 1-800 number that connects callers to a racy phone sex line.

Don Cudmore, executive director for the Tourism Association Industry of P.E.I., called the mistake "unfortunate . . . a 30-second story."

Cudmore said Wednesday he hopes the story's appeal will end soon and his industry, whose slogan is Come Play On My Island, can get back to the basics of trying to attract more visitors to the province.

Carol Horne, an official with Tourism P.E.I. in Charlottetown, said her office has received several calls and e-mails about the misprinted number.

She said the province is trying to locate the U.S. owner of the sex-line, but has had no luck so far. The government would like to purchase the number and retire it for good.

Horne admitted that purchasing the line may not fit into P.E.I.'s budget since initial research has shown it could cost up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

(Summerside Journal-Pioneer

You can try Graeme and Kate at: anterra@kw.igs.net

btw good sir,
my cattle have taken GREAT offense at being compared to that Sheila Copps, and have plain stopped givin' milk.
c'mere bessie, c'mere girl, it's ok
he didn't mean it....

eatin' dry cereal,
earl

this note is regard'n yer flush-out-the-taliban-with-the-neked-women-trick.

i support it!!!
now i'm ready and waitin' in my lawn-chair, a cold beer in one hand, and you know WHAT in the other, thats right, my SHOTGUN!
so fars i've eyed:
- two snakes
- half a squirrel(the result of 7 cats)
- a porcupine
- a rusty, smokin' chevy truck complete with gun-rack and...
- a voracious horde of blackflies.

there are no, i repeat NO neked women walking by, DAMN!!!!
this ain't gonna work for us backwood rural types, so i'm a goin' back inside ta find my own neked woman. EMMA!!!!!

p.s. i think the guy in the truck might a been half neked

rough hugs,
earl

I have just found the greatest antiwar, antibush site
http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/PhotoAlbum1.html go there now, thank me later

Fatherhood
What can I say except that it is extremely cool....how is it going at your end Cliff? does she have you wrapped around her little finger yet? Have you slept since January?

'there's no sex and drugs for Ian, I find mandolin strings in the middle of Austin'
Actually it isn't madolin strings I need, its madolin lessons, though not necessarily for me. One of the guitar player in my band, the Voodoo Hoodoos, bought a mando this week and needs to learn some chords etc. Anyone have any advice? Anyone have Chris Scales email? How about Graeme's?

May ghod and Pierre Trudeau forgive me, I know its a serious issue and all, but when I heard they had found a mad cow in Alberta, my first thought was that it was Sheila Copps trying to drum up support for her bid for the Liberal leadership.......

my latest from the Daily Yomiuri

IN YOUR EAR



Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

KELLY JOE PHELPS

Slingshot Professionals

Rykodisc, 2,177 yen


Slingshot Professionals is the fifth full-length album from Washington-born singer-songwriter-guitarist extraordinaire Kelly Joe Phelps. Stylistically, it follows the path laid out by 2001's Sky Like a Broken Clock, with long dramatic story-songs and impressionistic lyrics balancing Phelps' driven-yet-restrained acoustic slide guitar.

Phelps delivers a shot of intimate blues filtered through jazz and the virtuoso folk of performers such as Bert Janch, with a generous chaser of Tom Waits. The result is something reminiscent of an acoustic Dire Straits playing Leonard Cohen songs. However, to pigeonhole this music would be wrong.

Singer-songwriters often succumb to the pitfalls of their avocation, becoming too personal, taking themselves too seriously and becoming pretentious, emphasizing lyrics at the expense of instrumental work, or, as is often the case with virtuoso players, showing off their chops at the expense of the song. Many are just too whiny, too wimpy or too self-involved to be appealing.

Phelps is none of these things. His lyrics are mysterious, evocative and telling, never trite. His guitar work is restrained and subtle with just enough flash and testicular fortitude to grab the ears of the most dedicated guitar fan. To the credit of producer Lee Townsend, the music is seamless and polished but without any hint of affect or slickness. The addition of jazz guitarist Bill Frissel, a longtime Townsend collaborator, simply makes more of a good thing.

This is not an album you are likely to put on first thing in the morning unless you've been up all night. It's intense and energetic, but not in a bouncy, get-up-and-dance kind of way. Slingshot Professionals is impassioned, but never loud, and rootsy without any Nashville twang to it. It is a very rare thing: A record that contains no cheese of any kind. A sort of CD equivalent to those stay-up-until-sunrise conversations you had with your best friends back when none of you had to worry about working the next morning.



DAVE BILLER

LeRoy's Swing

Buffalo Records, 2,500 yen


This album, the result of a single live session by the Austin, Texas, quintet Les Niglos and released under the name of lead guitarist Dave Biller for pronunciation-driven reasons of social sensitivity, is not to be missed by fans of jazz guitar giant Django Reinhardt.

According to Biller, Les Niglos was originally formed by the members to have some some fun playing the music of their hero, Reinhardt.

Both the sense of fun and the overwhelming influence of Reinhardt on the band are very evident on LeRoy's Swing. Of the 13 tracks, four are Reinhardt compositions and six are songs the famous gypsy jazz guitarist often covered, including '30s hot jazz standards like "Tea for Two," "Sheik of Araby" and "Japanese Sandman." The remaining three tracks written by Biller blend so perfectly with the other material as to be almost indistinguishable.

The decision to name the band for Biller is a sensible one, as it is really his guitar playing that is showcased. Clarinetist Ben Saffer plays Stephane Grappeli to Biller's Reinhardt, and the addition of a reed to the string ensemble gives the group a warmer, smoother sound. Bassist Ryan Gould and guitarists Anthony Locke and Jeff Seaver make up the airtight rhythm section.

If Reinhardt and Grappeli with the original Hot Club of France Quintet were a blazing bonfire, then Biller and Saffer are the same fire a few hours later. The flames may not leap quite as high, but that allows us to stand closer and enjoy the warmth more.

Mike go to the link above to Blogspot, then choose the powered by Blogger link ( I think) and you should be in business.............if not,�@let me know and I will reinvite you.

dammit, i can't remember how to post directly.

thanks for the confirmation that i'm long-lost. i always suspected as much. i'm no vlad, but...
to anyone interested in my whereabouts, i'm living in hamilton with belle and three kids, working as a producer at cbc radio, still publishing some musicological stuff and making music.

Mike Daley

Just so that you all know your tax dollars are being well spent, I should tell you I have just returned from a reception at the Canadian Ambassador's Residence in tokyo for Canadian journalists here. A very nice buffet, open bar with Okanagan valley wines, Ottawa Valley aged cheddar, Molson's Canadian and moosehead. Ambassador Wright is a a very nice guy and a habs fan. About 40 scribes attended - did lots of networking and enjoyed the official residence's extremely impressive collection of canadian art, including a very nice A.Y. Jackson painting and some other group of seven looking stuff.

Strange Weather Lately

By Kurt Vonnegut, In These Times
May 19, 2003

The following is adapted from a Clemens Lecture presented in April for the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut.


First things first: I want it clearly understood that this mustache I'm wearing is my father's mustache. I should have brought his photograph. My big brother Bernie, now dead, a physical chemist who discovered that silver iodide can sometimes make it snow or rain, he wore it, too.


Speaking of weather: Mark Twain said some readers complained that there wasn't enough weather in his stories. So he wrote some weather, which they could insert wherever they thought it would help some.


Mark Twain was said to have shed a tear of gratitude and incredulousness when honored for his writing by Oxford University in England. And I should shed a tear, surely, having been asked at the age of 80, and because of what I myself have written, to speak under the auspices of the sacred Mark Twain House here in Hartford.


What other American landmark is as sacred to me as the Mark Twain House? The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln were country boys from Middle America, and both of them made the American people laugh at themselves and appreciate really important, really moral jokes.


I note that construction has stopped of a Mark Twain Museum here in Hartford – behind the carriage house of the Mark Twain House at 351 Farmington Avenue.


Work persons have been sent home from that site because American "conservatives," as they call themselves, on Wall Street and at the head of so many of our corporations, have stolen a major fraction of our private savings, have ruined investors and employees by means of fraud and outright piracy.


Shock and awe.


And now, having installed themselves as our federal government, or taken control of it from outside, they have squandered our public treasury and then some. They have created a public debt of such appalling magnitude that our descendants, for whom we had such high hopes, will come into this world as poor as church mice.


Shock and awe.


What are the conservatives doing with all the money and power that used to belong to all of us? They are telling us to be absolutely terrified, and to run around in circles like chickens with their heads cut off. But they will save us. They are making us take off our shoes at airports. Can anybody here think of a more hilarious practical joke than that one?


Smile, America. You're on Candid Camera.


And they have turned loose a myriad of our high-tech weapons, each one costing more than a hundred high schools, on a Third World country, in order to shock and awe human beings like us, like Adam and Eve, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.


The other day I asked former Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton what he thought of our great victory over Iraq, and he said, "Mohammed Ali versus Mr. Rogers."


What are conservatives? They are people who will move heaven and earth, if they have to, who will ruin a company or a country or a planet, to prove to us and to themselves that they are superior to everybody else, except for their pals. They take good care of their pals, keep them out of jail – and so on.


Conservatives are crazy as bedbugs. They are bullies.


Shock and awe.


Class war? You bet.


They have proved their superiority to admirers of Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain and Jesus of Nazareth, with an able assist from television, making inconsequential our protests against their war.


What has happened to us? We have suffered a technological calamity. Television is now our form of government.


On what grounds did we protest their war? I could name many, but I need name only one, which is common sense.


Be that as it may, construction of the Mark Twain Museum will sooner or later be resumed. And I, the son and grandson of Indiana architects, seize this opportunity to suggest a feature which I hope will be included in the completed structure, words to be chiseled into the capstone over the main entrance.


Here is what I think would be fun to put up there, and Mark Twain loved fun more than anything. I have tinkered with something famous he said, which is: "Be good and you will be lonesome." That is from Following the Equator. OK?


So envision what a majestic front entrance the Mark Twain Museum will have someday. And imagine that these words have been chiseled into the noble capstone and painted gold:


Be good and you will be lonesome most places, but not here, not here.


One of the most humiliated and heartbroken pieces Twain ever wrote was about the slaughter of 600 Moro men, women and children by our soldiers during our liberation of the people of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. Our brave commander was Leonard Wood, who now has a fort named after him. Fort Leonard Wood.


What did Abraham Lincoln have to say about such American imperialist wars? Those are wars which, on one noble pretext or another, actually aim to increase the natural resources and pools of tame labor available to the richest Americans who have the best political connections.


And it is almost always a mistake to mention Abraham Lincoln in a speech about something or somebody else. He always steals the show. I am about to quote him.


Lincoln was only a Congressman when he said in 1848 what I am about to echo. He was heartbroken and humiliated by our war on Mexico, which had never attacked us.


We were making California our own, and a lot of other people and properties, and doing it as though butchering Mexican soldiers who were only defending their homeland against invaders wasn't murder.


What other stuff besides California? Well, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming.


The person congressman Lincoln had in mind when he said what he said was James Polk, our president at the time. Abraham Lincoln said of Polk, his president, our armed forces' commander-in-chief, "Trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory, that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood – that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy, he plunged into war."


Holy smokes! I almost said, "Holy shit!" And I thought I was a writer!


Do you know we actually captured Mexico City during the Mexican War? Why isn't that a national holiday? And why isn't the face of James Polk up on Mount Rushmore, along with Ronald Reagan's?


What made Mexico so evil back in the 1840s, well before our Civil War, is that slavery was illegal there. Remember the Alamo?


My great-grandfather's name was Clemens Vonnegut. Small world, small world. This piquant coincidence is not a fabrication. Clemens Vonnegut called himself a "freethinker," an antique word for humanist. He was a hardware merchant in Indianapolis.


So, 120 years ago, say, there was one man who was both Clemens and Vonnegut. I would have liked being such a person a lot. I only wish I could have been such a person tonight.


I claim no blood relationship with Samuel Clemens of Hannibal, Missouri. "Clemens," as a first name, is, I believe, like the name "Clementine," derived from the adjective "clement." To be clement is to be lenient and compassionate, or, in the case of weather, perfectly heavenly.


So there's weather again.

Enter the Scottfreek, stage left...........

Dear Kev,

I apparently represent the only female contigent on your site as far as I
can tell. Hello, Hamish, Pete, Cliff, Mike (which one?)... Anyone know
where Vlad is?

Listening to Ron Sexsmith and Neko Case. Just those over and over again.

Reading: Oliver Sachs "Uncle Tungsten" - It's about chemistry and major
elemental discoveries and is sticking to my brain about as well as "A Short
History" (Hawking) did. I don't know why I bother.

Happy May two-four all. Thought about Algonquin, as usual, at this time of
year.

Alison



By the by - Since you are an invited member of the this blog you can post to the site without going through me via email, just go to the blogger site advertised above to get started. And the Mike in question is none other than the long-lost legendary Burlington Beatle better known as Mr. Daley.

And where the hell is Vlad anyways?

From the 'God is an Iron' dept
WASHINGTON (Agence France Presse) - Fired New York Times Reporter Jayson Blair is asking those who have supported him through the scandal not to believe "everything they read in the newspapers," Newsweek magazine reported Sunday.


and they say irony is dead...........