Step into a crosswalk in Boston, traffic will stop for you - even city busses and the insane cab drivers.

Step into a crosswalk in Raleigh, expect to die on the front grille of a Ford Excursion.

It's a joke down South that all the bad drivers are merely the Yankees who've invaded the southern cities and brought their rude, reckless driving habits with them. It's funny because it's wrong.

In an article about the decline of the "guilty pleasure" - in which she insists there is no such thing so it can't be in decline in the first place - Paige at Flux-Rad writes:

Liking things for irony’s sake is a complete waste of time, a total trivialization of the chance you’ve been given as a human to experience art and culture, and does little more than confirm your position as a simple-minded elitist masquerading as purveyor of good taste by acceptance of bad.

Wow. Type the name of the city and "weather" into a Google search box and it gives you a four-day forecast at the top of the search page. ex: boston weather

So cool.

John Cole gives five good reasons against Clinton and five good reasons for Obama. I agree 100% on all 10.

Clinton is wearying, and I don't want to live through 4 (or 8!) years of refried wingnut crap from 1996. If she wins, it'll be another decade of anti-Clinton conspiracy theories and constant demands for Congressional investigations. Plus, she seems willing to ignore the line between honorable and dishonorable (as she's making abundantly clear in the primaries), and will probably deserve a good portion of the investigations her opponents demand. Please, spare us.

Doodie Call

I made some grouper for dinner last night, and was going to serve it with a shittake mushroom risotto (my default side for fish). But, I changed my mind and went with a simple lentil stew - a version of this, without the ham and potatoes and with about 1/3 the tomatoes - instead of rice. But that left me with a handful of unpurposed shittakes. Since the lentil stew was going to be nice and hearty, I thought maybe they'd be good if I just sautéed them in butter, and plopped them on top of the fish at the end. And so I chopped em up, along with a couple of plain white mushrooms I had lying around, dropped em into a little sauté pan with a healthy chunk of butter, some sage, black pepper and a bit of salt. I let them cook down till they were nice and soft and buttery and yummy.

But, next to the burner where the mushrooms were sizzling, sat the last little bit of a bottle of Bowmore 17 year. Hmm... I applied my usual test: put the prospective ingredient above the cooking food and smell them together. A perfect fit! Just a tablespoon of whisky into the mushrooms, let them sizzle for a few minutes more. to get rid of the alcohol... maybe a little more butter. Ahh, totally awesome. The mushrooms, the peaty, smoky whisky, the butter, lentils, thyme, sage, Swiss chard.... mmm. Scotch mushrooms. Awesome. I highly recommend giving this a try - it'd be great with steak, too, I bet.