Monthly Archives: October 2012

House Of Mysteries

Welcome, readers, to this week's tale of mystery!

In June, we picked out our appliances. In July, we struggled to get the woman at the appliance store to tell the cabinet makers how big the appliances are, so they could build the cabinets the right size. We eventually succeeded, and having completed that task, thoughts of appliances quietly slipped from our minds.

Two months pass...

Last week, the appliances appeared in our garage, bundled in their boxes, safe and snug. Today, the builder's foreman called Mrs. and says the appliances do not fit into the cabinetry. The microwave doesn't fit the cabinet, and neither does the refrigerator. The stovetop does, however, fit the hole that was cut in the granite. That's good. But, he's going to have to get the cabinet people to remake the cabinetry.

Now wait just a minute!

What brand are the appliances he's trying to install?

It's all a different brand from what we ordered - except for the stovetop, which they luckily got right.

How can that be? How did the appliance people deliver a different brand to our house? And which measurements did the cabinet people get, if they weren't for the appliances that were actually delivered? And why won't the appliance people answer anyone's calls?


iPhone

And what lives behind that little door?!

Stay tuned! Maybe we'll know the answers to these questions, and more, when it's time for next week's Mysterious Fuck Up Of The Week!

Romney, Man Of Many Positions

He's too busy to do his own flip-flopping, so he has his aides do it for him:

Mitt Romney said Tuesday he has no plans to push for legislation limiting abortion, a softer stance from a candidate who has said he would "get rid of" funding for Planned Parenthood and appoint Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v. Wade.

“There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda,” the Republican presidential nominee told The Des Moines Register in an interview.

The Romney campaign walked back the remark within two hours of the Register posting its story. Spokeswoman Andrea Saul told the National Review Online's Katrina Trinko that Romney "would of course support legislation aimed at providing greater protections for life."

And...


After the first presidential debate at the University of Denver in Colorado on Wednesday night, one of Mitt Romney’s top advisers acknowledged that, as a result Romney’s plan to repeal Obamacare, people with pre-existing medical conditions would likely be unable to purchase insurance.

The admission directly contradicts the GOP candidate’s claim during the debate that “pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan” — a contention Romney has repeated on the trail and that his campaign has repeatedly walked back.

“With respect to pre-existing conditions, what Governor Romney has said is for those with continuous coverage, he would continue to make sure that they receive their coverage,” said Eric Fehrnstrom, referring to existing laws which require insurance companies to sell coverage to people who already have insurance, or within 90 days of losing their employer coverage.

I don't know what people see in him, because I don't see anything there - except his own personal ambition. It's a scary sight.

Škvarky

My Slavic/Russian/Czech/gypsy/whatever grandmother had a word she'd use to describe that delectable bit of crispy fried fat that you'd get on the outside of steaks and roasts. I, being young, never really got a good handle on what the actual word was, or how to pronounce it correctly, or even the language it was from. And I doubt she tried very hard to correct me when I said it. But, it stuck with me. In my head, it was "zhwatiky" or "skwatiki".

Since she's gone now, and so is my mother, it's too late to ask for clarification. So, over the past 20 years or so, I've asked all the eastern Europeans I've met if they know the word "zhwatiki" (they never do), or what the word for "fried fat" is in their language (it's never close).

Bored, I did a little Googling, and discovered the eastern European staple, salo: cured pork belly fat. "Salo" sounds like it could be a root of the word I'm looking for; maybe it wasn't "zhwatiky", but rather "salotiky" or "zhalotiky". So, I just needed to find a suffix "-tiky" that meant "fried", or "crispy", or even "little", in some unknown Slavic language. Well, that search didn't pan out.

But, "fried salo" did. It got me to a Wiki article on a Ukranian dish called Varenyky: stuffed dumplings, same idea as Polish pierogis (which north-eastern Americans might know). And these dumplings are often topped with "fried salo bits (shkvarky)".

And "shkvarky" is almost certainly the word, or is related to the word, that I've been mis-hearing in my head for decades as "zhwatiky". I don't know if my grandmother was Ukranian, but she was from that part of the world, so if that's not the word exactly maybe her version of the word is from a nearby country.

Anyway, here's what a plateful of shkvarky looks like.

That's a pretty fancy presentation for pork cracklins! I'm used to eating them out of a greasy wax paper sack.

Start Your iPods

Get your random five, rank them favorites first, justify your choices.

  1. Sam Prekop - The Shadow. The Sea & Cake's singer's first solo record sounds pretty much like it could have been an S&C record. But at the time, S&C was going into their dense Stereolab / electronic phase, and this is very airy, minimalistic, stuff.
  2. Colorblind James Experience - New Beret. CBJE started out with a unique jazzy two-step circus polka feel; but that eventually gave way to more of a straight country/western vibe. Regardless of the base, though, they always had Chuck's deadpan lyrics and delivery and his love of repeating a simple curious melodic figure like clockwork throughout the song. They seemed to play a call/response role: Chuck sing/speaks a line and the songs's clockwork melody jumps up for a couple of bars, then back to Chuck, etc..
  3. Replacements - Buck Hill. An instrumental. Country/surf guitar line, and breaks that were eventually reworked into Tim's "Kiss Me On The Bus" (I assume). It feels like it needs just a bit more ... something. Maybe some of Westerberg's clever lyrics, maybe an explosive ending. Something. Still, it's a nice sketch.
  4. Robyn Hitchcock - Ye Sleeping Knights Of Jesus (live). This was never one of my favorite RH songs. But, it's a decent rendition, and Robyn's lyrical improvisations are fun.
  5. Louis Armstrong : Alligator Crawl. A bit slow, a bit plodding, and Louis' trumpet boppin over the top can't get this one out of the mud.

That was a pretty good random five. No bad songs, this time.

What you got?