Y'all know about live blogging, right? Well this is live blog cookin'. Tonight's special is called Macho Dip. I'll be making two flavors - one that works well as a depilatory and one for pussy wuss momma's boys.

Assemble the ingredients

Two pounds chopped sirloin (I don't know why it's called "ground" when it's beef and "chopped" when it's sirloin. I think it's just so they can charge you an extra 50 cents a pound. Anyway, use sirloin or 97% beef or whatever they call the good stuff in your neck of the woods.)

One big-ass block of Velveeta cheese. (I think it's two pounds. Use "Mexican Flavor" if they have it. If not, no big deal. It's not like this is real cheese anyway.)

Two cans Campbell's Cheddar Cheese soup. (They used to have "Nacho Cheese" soup but I haven't seen that in a coon's age.)

Two jars of salsa. (I'm using one mild and one hot since I'm doing the real one and a pussy variety.)

Anal-friendly sauces. (For the wuss dip.)

Anal-explosive sauces. (For the depilatory dip.)

Corn chips.

Beer. (Whatever variety you prefer to drink. It's not for the dip, it's for you. None of the wimmen folk will be bothering you while you cook for fear that they will frighten a man out of this strange 'kitchen' environment so it's the perfect chance to sock a couple away 'free of charge'.)

Begin Cooking

Get a big frying pan and put it on the stove.

Turn the stove on. Figure about 70% of maximum. If your dial thingy doesn't go to 10 you can use a calculator to figure out where to set it.

Put the beef in the pan.

Chop the hell out of it with your spatula so it's in bitty bits instead of the big rectangle o' beef. Use a spatula appropriate to your pan.

Drink some beer.

If the pan is non-stick and you used the barbecue spatula you will need to consume more beer now in order to weather the assault that will come later.

After a couple minutes use the spatula to whack apart the beef pancake that has solidified in the pan.

Drink some more beer.

If you started drinking prior to cooking (you know to build up your courage) you may need to pee now. Go for it.

Be right back...

Hey, this is just like one of those cooking shows only you don't have to send in two bucks for the transcript!

Drink some more beer.

When the beef is browned nicely (this is a French cullinary term meaning "healthy dark gray with earthy undertones") turn the stove down to simmer, or #2, or low, or whatever the next to the lowest setting is on your stove.

Strain the beef.

Put the Velveeta into the now beef-less pan. Make damn sure that you put that sucker on low. Velveeta is a space age polymer that resists all damage (including digestion) except heat.

Drink some beer.

If you did not turn the stove down you should begin pounding the beer at this stage as you just ruined her best pan.

Seriously, burned Velveeta is what they use to stick the tiles on the Space Shuttle. Don't burn the Velveeta.

When it starts to melt whack it apart with your spatula. Yes there is a lot of whacking in this recipe. Guys are naturally superior wackers after all.

Drink some more beer.

When the Velveeta is all nice and smoothly melted add the cheddar cheese soup to it. Mix well.

Beer.

Get out another skillet type pan. Oh, you thought this was a single pan dish? It probably is for you, you lucky bastard. Me - I'm making two flavors so I need two pans. Grmblrm...

VERY IMPORTANT! Do not forget which pan has the hot and which one has the not. If you're making two flavors like I am. Which you probably aren't. So ignore this part.

More beer, please.

Split the amazingly cheese-like substance between the two pans.

Add the beef to the two pans. Put more beef into the one that you'll be eating. They won't notice but it'll satisfy your inner gremlin.

Let it warm up a bit more.

You did turn on the burner under the second skillet, right?

Dumbass. Do that now. And have some more beer. Thankyou! Don't mind if I do.

Gotta pee again.

Don't forget to wash your hands after you pee. Thanks.

Okay, where the hell are we now? Right! Salsa. Add the cans of salsa. Mix up the pans real good.

Turn the brners up to 3 or 4 or "braize" or whatever medium low is on your stove.

"Brners"? Um...yeah.

More beer.

Warm up the concoctions for a little bit. Stir occasionally.

You should be able to finish a full beer right at this stage.

Add sauces to taste. For the wuss flavor you're probably okay as is. I'm using just a little chipotle and cheyenne. For the man's dish it is important to remember that everything you have done to this point was to create a vehicle for hot sauce delivery. I'm using chipotle, chili, cheyenne, habanero and scotch bonnet sauces.

I got the scotch bonnet sauce for Christmas.

Mmmm...beer...

It's from Jamaica. The sauce, not the beer.

Jamaica is now on my short list of places to visit. Hot sauce and ganja. What more could you ask for?

Put the stuff into bowls and scoop it out with the corn chips.

And don't forget the beer! As this food has no actual dairy content, thus no lactic acid, it is an incremental hot. That is, the more you eat the hotter it will get. Beer should be used to modulate the ambient heat level. You can easily work 2 more beers in during consumption.

And there you have it - Jim's Macho Dip.

Thank you, thank you. Oh, you're too kind. Too kind.

Posted by: Jim at 04:22 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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1 Hilarious..

Posted by: Tiffani at December 30, 2004 04:56 PM (KE4Gu)

2 Heh. Funny. Thanks for "blogrolling" me, or I never would have found you!

Posted by: Elizabeth at December 31, 2004 02:17 AM (uAgji)

3 Well, I'd watch you over some geek cooking frog gook ANY day. Pass me a beer and some of that Man Dip?

Posted by: Margi at December 31, 2004 02:20 AM (rKX9f)

4 I love to watch a man cook nekkid... Have some dip? ME?? *backs away slowly*

Posted by: Claire at December 31, 2004 02:30 AM (l1oyw)

5 ROFLMAO! Get that man his own cooking show!!!

Posted by: Boudicca at December 31, 2004 04:17 PM (ogaj7)

6 Sage spiced sausage works too...Happy New Year! Rob n Ann

Posted by: el robbo at December 31, 2004 08:42 PM (EAst4)

7 After all that dip and all that beer all I have to say is: NAPPY YEW HEAR!! (hic) "But Ossifer, I'm not as think as people drunk I am."

Posted by: diamond dave at January 01, 2005 08:49 AM (bQbts)

8 Red Stripes, were they? I love Red Stripe. Dip sounds tasty. And your use of Velveeta makes me feel better about my easy-cheaty version: Two cans Hormel Chili, hot, no beans Two jars Cheez Whiz Hot sauces Mix Hormel and Cheez Whiz over low-medium heat. Doctor accordingly with hot sauces. DONE. Where would this country be without fake cheese?

Posted by: ilyka at January 02, 2005 04:25 PM (rzrtH)

9 Cheyenne pepper? Is that from Wyoming?

Posted by: Sigivald at January 04, 2005 04:52 PM (4JnZM)

10 Mmmmm... That sounds really good. Especially with chipotle. But, if I were to make it, I'd probably be drinking tequila instead of beer

Posted by: Ninjababe at January 05, 2005 08:39 PM (pxwNe)

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I'm in shorts and a t-shirt. We're going to burn stuff tonight in the big steel barrel. Outside. In December.

I love Georgia.

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Me: I have a problem with the UI (user interface) on this program.

Boss #2: What's the problem?

Me: It seems to have been designed by a team of near-sighted epileptics.

Boss #2: [silence]

Me: On crack.

Boss #2: [silence]

Me: During hurricane Ivan.

Boss #2: I laid that one out.

Me: The graphics are striking.

I am now tasked with defining and documenting UI standards.

Posted by: Jim at 11:55 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I heard a story about Venezuela on NPR this morning. A political action group is being charged with treason for encouraging citizens to vote against the sitting president. The group receives funds from the US through the National Endowment for Democracy. The gist of the story is that American money is being spent to further American interests instead of bolstering a democracy.

Well...duh. (Issue 1)

Generally speaking a strong democracy is in America's best interests. As an ostensibly democratic nation we deal better with other ostensibly democratic nations. However, not all governments perform admirably in following our wish list, whether the government is democratic, oligarchic, despotic or other. American money should most definitely be spent to further American interests. One of our great interests is fomenting democracy so our money is very often spent supporting democratic causes but this does not and should not mean that we will spend money on supporting a democracy against our national interests.

Um...excuse me? (Issue 2)

How exactly is giving money to a party working within the democratic framework of their country not supporting democracy? Isn't one of the tenets of democracy the ability to organize change from within? The money here is being spent in support of a candidate in a democratic election. Since when is it not democratic to support a candidate in an election?

Conclusion

NPR really pisses me off sometimes.

Posted by: Jim at 11:50 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Annette of More Than Words is moving to Atlanta. This shows that she has class and taste and some not insignificantly challenging mental issues. I joke - her writing shows the class and taste. The move to Atlanta only illustrates the mental thing.

Anywho, she's doing a photo scavenger hunt and needs items for the list. Pop on over and give her a few ideas of what she should shoot.

I should specify that "shoot" means with a camera. It won't default to gun use until she's been a Southerner for at least 12 months.

Posted by: Jim at 08:54 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Generally speaking I work every Monday through Friday. The drive into work is pretty busy. It takes forty-five minutes to an hour (down to about a half hour at the moment with half of the workforce on Christmas vacation). I estimate that I probably see about 2,000 other cars on my way to work. That includes both lanes of traffic and a passing view of the bumper to bumper throughway. The vast majority of them have only a driver. Since this is a pretty rough estimate we'll just say I visually encounter 2,000 people on the way to work.

The ride home is even worse. Call that 2,500 people.

Sometimes I stop at the QT for gas, a danish, maybe coffee. On a busy morning I'll see 50 people there.

I work in a four story building. We've got about 300 people here on any given day. True, I don't interact with but a small fraction of them but we'll stretch the definition a bit and say they're part of my daily encounter.

I might stop at CVS on the way home to get some milk (they have Mayfield milk cheaper than any of the supermarkets and I loooove me some Mayfield). Another 20 people or so there.

Sometimes we might need something from the supermarket. A Wal-Mart stop might even be in order. That's easily another 1,000 people combined.

I also see the most precious people in my world every day. That's four more people.

How many is that now? Let's see...2,000 plus 2,500 plus 50 and another 300...add 20 and another 1,000 then top it off with my four reasons for living. I encounter somewhere around 5,874 people in a busy day.

Now let's say that on my drive to work there were no other cars on the road. None at all. And when I stopped at QT it was empty. Nobody at the pumps. Nobody to run my card for my purchase. When I get to work the parking lot is completely empty. There's no guard at the security desk. There's nobody in the hallway. Nobody in the breakroom. At my stop at CVS I get a deja vu of the QT experience of the morning. Nobody is there. It's the same at Kroger and Wal-Mart. These massive consumer edifices lie starkly abandoned. Normally teeming with people, they are now vacant and deathly silent.

When I arrive home there is no jumble of kids at the door yelling "My Daddy's home!". There is no Lovely Wife waiting to greet me with a kiss.

Say that this happened every single day for half a month. That is about how many people have died from the tsunami in Asia.

I've been trying to wrap my mind around that number - 77,000 dead. I'm afraid that I've managed to do so.

Posted by: Jim at 12:47 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Y'all know the drill, right? The contest will be open until the end of the year or maybe a day or two later depending on how hungover I am. Best caption gets 5 points with another handful thrown around to the rest of the best.

Posted by: Jim at 08:36 AM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
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It tolls for that stinking rat bastard*.

The battles were harsh and more than once our courage faltered but we finally got him using bacon in the traps. He was a valiant foe but he was not a match for the power of bacon.

All told he cost us a squirrel, two birds, several days of rat banquet service as he stripped the traps and a crawl space completely covered with scattered rat shit.

* This is not an empty disparagement. As Georgia in its infinite wisdom has modified its Constitution with limits on the definition of marriage we can be certain that this rat's parents did not form a legal union prior to his birth.

Posted by: Jim at 12:17 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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So I joined BlogExplosion*. It's a nifty idea. You surf through blogs and accumulate points which are then spent to direct other surfers to your blog. You spend 30 seconds on a blog to get credit for viewing it.

One notable problem is that although surfing through the blogs takes a manual click there's nothing to stop people from keeping the surfing window open and just returning to it periodically to click to the next blog without ever giving a site even a cursory look. Oh, well. There are asses in every crowd, no sense crying about it.

The cool thing is that you might actually find a couple of blogs that you like. I've got a half dozen in the evaluation stage now. That's sweet.

Another sucky thing is that you get exposed to a whole lot of absolutely horrible blogs. True garbage, presented on a bed of skank with a side of rotten. After a short while surfing I've identified several instant elimination criteria. Any blog that pops up with any of these gets clicked off right away. Yeah, that means no credit for viewing but my browsing time is limited and I'm not about to look at a piece of crap for half a minute when there might be something worthwhile right around the corner.

So what are these items that ring the death knell for Jim's surfing? I'm glad you asked!

Black backgrounds with blue text. Or any dark background with any dark text. Any light background with light text too for that matter. If I have to highlight text in order to read it the site is dead to me. Ditto for obscuring background graphics.

Yet another female blogger set up with a pink background. Sorry, it's just too trite and common. I'm sure there are many fine pink-backgrounded blogs out there but the vast majority of these are full of inane posts and whining about terrible fate and the vagaries of being misunderstood.

The first post is a health complaint. Or the title is something along the lines of "My life with incurable rectal stenosis" or "My battles with chronic depression". Don't get me wrong now, I'm a compassionate person - I've got compassion leaking out of every orifice. I'm very interested in the travails of my friends and acquaintances. From them it is sharing and support. From strangers it is just depressing. Think of it this way; if you were on the subway and you had the choice between talking with the depressed guy with facial ulcers or the well spoken and cheerful accountant you'd probably pick the accountant. Unless you had some sort of ulcer fetish of course.

The first post is hard-line partisan. Strident tones from the right, left or middle. I like reading political commentary and opinions from every side but I'm fed up with the temper tantrums. Instant site failure.

sk8r kr@p. If u t1pe l1ke dis ur s1te sukz.

Too much crap in the sidebars. For the love of all that is holy, don't have so much crap on your site that it can't possibly load in 30 seconds over a T1 line. Animations, massive graphics, a hundred link buttons, busted java scripts, clutter, geegaws and toys. A weather pixy with a tagboard will get me off of a site faster than Michael Moore downs a Krispy Kreme.

And that's about it. It just comes down to the essentials really: have a site that is easy to load and navigate and doesn't immediately turn me off with depressing or angry content. And yes, I know that on any given day my site would fail one or more of these criteria. That's okay though, I already have the best readers in the world.

* Sign up with BlogExplosion through this link and I'll get 'points' as your referrer. That would be cool and would put a big smile on my depressed ulcerated face.

Posted by: Jim at 11:44 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Comments are going to be just a touch different now. In an effort to defeat the spambots I've implemented this solution (pointed out by Pylorns). You'll need to preview comments before you can post them now.

Hopefully this, along with the comment script hiding that Pixy has already done, will keep these sumbitches at bay until I can move to MT3.

Posted by: Jim at 10:21 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I'm under a constant stream of crapspam bombardment. I started to go through entries one by one to turn commenting off but that is just this side of ridiculous seeing as I have a bonifide shitload of posts.

How the fuck can I turn all commenting off on an MT blog?

Posted by: Jim at 09:13 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Snowballs!

Something tells me that Claire won't be sending me an interactive Christmas card next year.

Posted by: Jim at 11:55 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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We went light with dinner on Christmas Eve. The whole day was full of snacking and egg nogging so a big dinner would have been a waste. In any case, the kids wanted to keep it light so they'd be in fighting trim for Christmas morning. The dinner itself was light and refreshing but the conversation was another story.

[The Scene] The Peacock Clan sits around the table eating spiced fries. Occasionally one or more children (and one or more adults) will break into a Christmas Carol. The mood is festive and gay.

Bear: [sings] Jingle Bells! Batman smells!

Bacon: [sings] Robin laid an egg!

Bear: No, Grandma laid an egg.

Bacon: Did not!

Bear: Did so!

Burger: [sings] Grandma got run over by a reindeer...

Bear: [sings] Walking home from our house Christmas Eve!

Bacon: [sings] Robin laid an egg!

[A vocal squabble errupts wherin the relative merits of the Grandma and Robin versions are discussed at length. Eventually a strained silence is achieved.]

Burger: [Leans to the side in the "letting one sneak out" pose] I'm pooping!!

Me: No, you are not.

Burger: Yes I am! At the table!

Lovely Wife: Do you need to go to the potty?

Burger: I'm pooping in my pants! In my pull-up!

Bear: No toilet talk at the table!

[Chaos ensues]

They say that awareness of bodily functions is one of the critical steps towards potty training, so this is progress. That's what I tell myself, anyway.

Posted by: Jim at 11:55 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Merry Christmas from the Peacock Clan.

More adorable pictures at Lovely Wife's place.

Posted by: Jim at 10:26 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I had a freaking long-ass drive home yesterday. Y'all benefit from my misfortune though because a new story wrote itself during my extended commute.

Three and oh is now posted over at Protomonkey. This is one of my better ones, if I do say so myself. It popped in the noggin almost whole and all I had to do was get it down in type.

Plus, in a stark departure from my normal Christmas fare, it isn't a horror story!

Merry Christmas!

Posted by: Jim at 11:10 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Lovely Wife has the replay.

Posted by: Jim at 11:08 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Ms. Coworker: Don't freak out or anything, but I had a dream about you last night.

Sir Coworker: A dream about me?

Ms. Coworker: Well, you were in it. You, me and Bob. We were in the telecon room talking with Kansas City and I looked over at you and you had this monstrous bugger [that's 'booger' through a hellacious accent] hanging out your nose.

Sir Coworker: Gross.

Ms. Coworker: Yeah. Totally. I tried to let you know without saying anything so KC wouldn't know but you just looked at me like I was a freak.

Sir Coworker: What about Bob?

Ms. Coworker: Um...I don't know. I guess he was just gone then.

Sir Coworker: Freaky.

Ms. Coworker: Yeah. But then I emailed you about the bugger so you would know about it, only I sent it to the group by accident. All the KC people were going on like "Ewwww! Gross! It's huge!" like they could all of a sudden see it or something.

Sir Coworker: Weird.

Ms. Coworker: Yeah. So you picked it and I was like "Gag", you know? But it wasn't really a bugger. It was your brain coming out your nose.

Sir Coworker: That is fucked up.

Ms. Coworker: Yeah! Then it got weird.

Sir Coworker: That wasn't weird enough?

Ms. Coworker: Okay, it got weirder. Suddenly I was you and you were me looking at me picking the brain bugger. It was me all the time only I was confused or something because my brains were coming out of my nose.

Sir Coworker: That is one seriously weird dream.

Ms. Coworker: Yeah! Oh, my microwave is done. See you later.

Sir Coworker: Later!

Me: [suddenly and conclusively no longer hungry]

Posted by: Jim at 11:02 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 I'm confused... was that really a bugger, or a booger? The post makes a lot more sense with the latter.

Posted by: Garret at December 23, 2004 11:34 AM (IOwam)

2 Clarification added. The word was 'booger' but the pronunciation was 'bugger'. I always strive to represent authentic flavor.

Posted by: Jim at December 23, 2004 11:41 AM (tyQ8y)

3 mmmm... buggers & brains... I don't understand the last line of this post ;-)

Posted by: Harvey at December 24, 2004 09:51 AM (tJfh1)

4 Stuff like this is why I went back to work for pay. You can't make stuff like that up... Free entertainment...

Posted by: Boudicca at December 24, 2004 09:11 PM (ogaj7)

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Dusty has it all figured out.

At the four corners of most intersections there are usually light posts or some other weapon mounting system.

It's generic enough to work for just about any big city, too!

Posted by: Jim at 11:55 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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If your sentence begins with any of the following, please consider whether there is an actual need to relate the information you are about to divulge:

Don't freak out or anything but...
I probably shouldn't say anything but...
Don't get the wrong idea but...

In fact, if the "but..." conditional is anywhere in the opening sentence of your anecdote you may want to rethink the necessity of speaking whatever is on your mind.

And if you should decide that your personal world will stop unless you divulge your mental gem please, please, please verify that there is nobody within earshot who shouldn't, mustn't or doesn't want to hear what you are about to relate.

Especially if that person is me.

And you are talking about bodily functions gone awry.

Thanks,
Jim

Posted by: Jim at 09:58 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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You won't find it at Protomonkey. You will find a twisted little Christmas story by Michele though, accompanied by a Christmas thriller by yours truly.

And once your holiday jones has been sated you can take a well deserved breather with shank's first contribution. Don't breath too deeply though - his protaganist is about as sympathetic as mine.

Hmmm...that's a spooky Christmas story two years in a row for me. Does that make it a trend or a tradition?

Posted by: Jim at 12:26 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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