Brisk Love

My Mother's Brisket & Other Love Songs by Rick Moranis (Short for Frederick not Richard)

 

The brisket muscles include the superficial and deep pectorals. As cattle do not have collar bones, these muscles support about 60% of the body weight of standing/moving cattle. This requires a significant amount of connective tissue, so the resulting meat must be cooked correctly to tenderize the connective tissue.

 

Brisket can be cooked many ways and is often basted during the cooking process. A tough cut of meat due to the collagen fibres that make up the significant connective tissue in the cut, the brisket is tenderized when the collagen gelatinizes. The fat cap, which is often left attached to the brisket, helps to keep the meat from drying during the prolonged cooking necessary to break down the connective tissue in the meat.

 

But this album has little to do with cooking.

 

 

Bat Honesty

See.  Women say they want honesty in relationships, but when they get it, they are not happy.

Kiss Of Doom

He already knows she's bad for him. Six months time she'll be saying stuff like "Why do you always have ti rush off and go save people?"; "When are you going to stop flying around and focus on your career at the newspaper?"; "I don't want you rescuing other women from burning buildings anymore. Think about my feelings for a change."  The End indeed.

Chilling Chopsticks

Consecotaleophobia - Fear of Chopsticks.

Although phobias can be of anything, it's still surprising this is common enough to have an official name.  Generally Chinese and Vietnamese chopsticks are notably longer than Japanese and Korean chopsticks so may have a more frightening appearance.  On the other hand Japanese and Korean chopsticks taper to a much sharper point than the blunt ended Chinese and Vietnamese versions, so maybe this is scarier.

 

 

 

But to be fair to people with Consecotaleophobia, chopstick etiquette isn't a simple affair.  Some do's and don'ts:

• Holding chopsticks incorrectly reflects badly on a child's parents.
• Food should not be transferred between chopsticks. Food in need of transportation should be placed onto the recipient's plate or on a new plate for collection.
• Using the reverse end of the chopsticks is acceptable if communal serving utensils are not provided, but it is bad form to eat with them in this fashion.
• Don't tap chopsticks on the edge of one's bowl as beggars make this sort of noise to attract attention.
• It is impolite to spear food with a chopstick. Anything too difficult to be handled with chopsticks should be eaten with a spoon.
• One should not 'dig' or 'search' through one's food for something in particular. This is sometimes known as "digging one's grave" or "grave-digging".
• Chopsticks should not be bitten on, or held in the mouth for any length of time.
• Holding both a spoon and chopsticks simultaneously is frowned upon.
• Resting chopsticks at the top of the bowl means "I've finished". Resting chopsticks on the side of one's bowl or on a chopstick stand signifies one is merely taking a break from eating.
• Chopsticks should not be placed in a "V" shape when done eating, it is often interpreted as a bad omen
• Chopsticks should not be crossed on a table, as this symbolizes death.
• It is considered impolite to point rested chopsticks towards others seated at the table.
• Chopsticks should not be left vertically stuck into a bowl of rice because it resembles the ritual of incense-burning that symbolizes "feeding" the dead and death in general.

 

Creepy Crazy Relatives

Missed doing a post about Mothers Day the other week, on account of being overseas at the time.  Anyway, I think there should be more days to celebrate family members each year.  I propose Crazy Aunts Day and Creepy Uncles Day.

 

 

Crazy Aunts Day will be a day to give a token card to your mental aunty who's house is so full of hoarded trash that only her fifty seven cats can navigate it.

 

And similarly Creepy Uncles Day is a day to pay a visit to that uncle with the hentai collection who's isn't allowed within 500m of a school.

 

Crazy Aunts Day and Creepy Uncles Day is the best way to go to show your appreciation for those Uncles and Aunts that are completely unappreciable.

 

 

Hair Limp Forever

Despite previously deciding to move away from misheard lyrics, I find I'm posting another.

 

It's My Life was released as a single in May 2000, the song hit #1 across several countries (although it only reached #33 in the US), giving the song the distinction of making Bon Jovi the only 80s hair metal band to reach the top 40 in the 21st century.

 

 

Happy Fathers Day

 

Hobbit Housing

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."

A guy called Simon Dale built a real, live in, hillside hobbit house in Wales on a budget of just £3,000. Thats a cost of around $10 per square metre!

 Simon Dale constructed the woodland hobbit house for his family from stone, mud, and remnant wood from nearby forests, taking only four months to fully complete the project with help from his father-in-law. The home is also adorned with fairy lights and wooden furniture to complete the Tolkin look.

Designed to be fully sustainable, the home is heated by a wood burner with solar panels on the roof to provide power. It also has water supplied by a nearby spring to complete the cost free utilities.  Simon says: "Being your own have-a-go architect is a lot of fun and allows you to create and enjoy something which is part of yourself". But the real question is: do the solar panels also charge the batteries for his wife's Bilbo?

 Despite having no previous experience as a builder or carpenter the ambitious plans came to fruition.  Quite surprising really as hobbits are plain, simple folk who don't like adventures because it makes them late for dinner.  Simon says: "This kind of building is accessible to anyone. My main relevant skills were being able bodied, having self belief and perseverance and a mate or two to give a lift now and again".  All he needs now is a gardener called Sam.

Endangered Meals

As meat eaters, animals that we like to eat (cows, sheep, pigs) we tend to breed and farm to not just eat but encourage the increase of demand for those animals. Whereas protected species gradually diminish in numbers heading towards extinction due to habitat incursion from human development.

Therefore I propose that the best way to protect an endangered animal is to put it on the menu. Now I'm not talking about going out hunting them in the wild.  That's just not going to work.  What needed is to turn the uncared about endangered creatures of the planet into highly profitable and desired sustenance.

If we look at say turtles in Australia compared with other places in South East Asia we can see how this might work.  In Australia most turtles are a protected species due to their dwindling populations. Where as in other parts of South East Asia, turtles are regularly consumed  in many places and are in abundance.  When supply of  is scarce, costs increase and farmers increase production to take advantage of high profit margins. As supply floods the market, demand increases due to the lowering of price.

Now take a look at this panda:

See how meaty it is, just like a juicy cow.  You could eat that.  I bet it's tender from lounging around all day and should taste great from it's diet of bamboo shoots.

Magic Sink

Like I was saying to my wife the other week, I think we have a magic sink.  I finish eating and put the plates in the sink for later, then I go back to wash them up about an hour or so later and remarkably they are all clean! It's a magic sink!

Back & Crack

My latest idea is for an anti-dandruff shampoo called Back and Crack.  It's like Head and Shoulders shampoo, except it's for back and crack.

It's much needed.

Avon Man

The Man from Avon written by Michael Avallone and published, not surprisingly, by Avon.

This could possibly be the most awesome story ever written.  Larry McKnight makes James Bond look like an amateur.  After saving the damsel from the UFOs and parachuting back to earth he's still ready with his product briefcase in hand to sell her books and makeup.

The unfortunate truth about Larry McKnight is that not having a government pay check like Bond, has forced him to devise elaborate schemes involving alien abductions and heroic rescues so he can make his sales quota through his clients feelings of gratuitous obligation.

Irish Twins

From The Urban Dictionary
Irish Twins

Siblings born within 12 months of each other.

"They were like rabbits. Now their Irish twins are six and seven."

Zeppelins

Most people don’t realise that the zeppelin is making a revival both as a freight transport ship and cruise ship.  I propose going one better, a smaller scale household airship to tackle the problem of congested traffic on our roads.  This "Family Zeppelin" will be an ideal alternative to the family car.

The first zeppelin flight occurred on 2 July 1900, three and a half years before the Wright brothers famous flight.  Later while the Wright brothers were still arguing with governments and the media as to the authenticity of their flying contraptions success, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin  was making plans for the commercial market.  In 1909 the LZ-6 (no the L doesn't stand for Led) became the first zeppelin used for commercial passenger transport.  By 1914 the world's first airline, DELAG, was founded and had purchased seven of Count Zeppelins zeppelins.

Everyone went off zeppelins after the Hindenburg disaster in 1937 because it was such a visually memorable crash.  The thing to remember is that the Hindenburg was filled with hydrogen and also had a flammable outer coating paint with properties not unlike to rocket fuel which seemed like a good idea at the time.  Modern zeppelins are filled with non flammable helium and made of lighter, stronger materials like kevlar and PVF rather than wood and steel.   On top of that modern auto navigation, better propulsion systems and being solar hybrid, really make owning a zeppelin the best transport of the future and they could be parked on the roof.

Zeppelins are definitely the way to go for the future of transport and we can look forward to television shows like Top Gas and Pimp My Inflatable.  Also for those over compensating, the massively phallic shape more than makes up for a sports cars short comings.  But the biggest case in favour of the family zeppelin is the awesome city skyline it would create.

Sushi Lightsaber

Several months ago my wife purchased a sushi maker, it roles the rice and filling of the sushi so all you have to add is the seaweed exterior.  The device absolutely looks like a kitchen lightsaber. 

As you can see in the picture, it could be either Obi-wan Kenobis lightsaber from The Phantom Menace or Obi-wans from the original A New Hope.  It depends on which way round you hold it, but it's definitely of a Kenobi design.

A Wee Oversight

I made a wee oversight in my post the other week on the domestic uses of urine. Plastic manufacture! Mixing urea and formaldehyde creates urea-formaldehyde (sometimes know as urea-methanal) which is a non-transparent thermosetting plastic resin.  It was commonly used from the 1950s to the 1980s to make plastic casing of electrical equipment.  Heaps and heaps of things in your grandparents house was made from urine, desk lamps, light fittings, radios it was everywhere.  Urea-formaldehyde is still sometimes used as a bonding agent in marine plywood.

The Domestic Uses of Urine

In addition to marking your territory, the uses of urine are far to many to cover in just one post. So I'm going to split the topic into domestic and medical.

On a domestic level the highly alkaline properties of urine give it chemically similar properties to detergent, soap and bleach. In the first century, the Roman's valued the use of urine that they imposed a tax upon it. This tax, if nothing else, was a good way to piss off the populous.

One of the most well known uses of urine is in the leather tanning process. Once soaked in urine, the flesh and fatty tissues semi-dissolve and can be scraped off much more easily. In a later phase of the tanning process, urine is rubbed onto the outside of the skin to remove any unwanted hair.

Being so effective at removing rotting meat and fat, urine was often used to clean cooking and eating cutlery. In places where water is scarce this is still sometimes practiced. In East Africa where clean water is almost non existent, people are realised from birth having their cooking pots and drinking cups washed in cow urine. Some have developed a taste for the flavour of cow urine, and members of some tribes will add cow pee to their milk. Keep that in mind the next time you into a glass of banana milk.

Blacksmiths often used urine in the final stage of the smithing process, many believing that urine created a higher grade metal over simple water when used to temper swords and gave it a nice wee sheen.

But where would the fabric dying industry be without the miracle golden stream? As a cleansing agent before dyeing it removes oils and dirt. As a colour extracting agent, certain plants soaked in urine will yield a rich useable pigmentation. A bucket of wee is also an effective dying medium and fixative to set colours. It's said in the old days fabric makers would leave a large tub at the local pub for donors to freely contribute. Behaving like a reverse milkman, the dangerous bit was lifting it up overhead onto the collecting cart.

High in ammonia urine has been used as a bleaching agent for thousands of years. While modern advertising of cleaning products frequently refer to the ability to remove urine a little wee can actually help remove suborn stains. Next time you need to go while doing the laundry, just a tinkle into the washer and you can whiten those whites.

Although not a common practice, the addition of urine in the cheese-making process is known to make a richer, stronger tasting cheese. For some reason this is highly sought after by those who've tasted it. One wonders what flavour would be printed on the supermarket label?

If you take a heavily urine soaked lump of dirt, place it in a bucket wire mesh in the bottom, and then repeatedly run hot water through it, you'll get little crystals of potassium nitrate. Mix these crystals with sulphur and powdered charcoal and you'll have gunpowder. See I wasn’t lying about the explosive power in my (damp) underpants.

In ye old times a little wee was used to dissolve away ink from parchment. It was like a personal delete button for scribes and friars, and a god reason to get out of the habit of licking your fingertips to turn book pages.

A medieval concoction that allegedly repaired cracks in gold objects called chrysocollon, had a traditional recipe as such: An innocent young boy must urinate into a mortar of red copper, while a pestle (also made of red copper) is in motion. Next, the mortar of urine must be exposed in the sun until it has become as thick as honey. Perfect for mending that favourite drinking goblet you broke.

 Strangely, hanging coral in the urea rich fumes of an outhouse causes it to regain it's vivid colour. More strange is that hanging musk, among the fumes will revive its potency. Check the ingredients in most perfumes you’ll find urea, I always said the French label read as toilet water.

As a shampoo the alkaline properties of urine can cut through greasy build-up and leave your hair softer and more manageable. Look at the ingredients of your store purchased bottle and you may find out what you're rubbing into your head. However, don't expect showering under the source to have the same fragrance as your favourite brand.

Similarly as a face and body wash, a little pee will easily clean away dirt and oils from your skin. Many believe it gives their skin a softer, more radiant appearance. Feel free to use your imagination as to how this was discovered. Today distilled urea from urine is in almost every beauty product you can think of. One wonders where the beauty industry sources it's urine from. Is there some elaborate mechanism to collect the urine of animals? Or do the third world factory workers get payed a bonus for donating?

So throw out all your detergents, washing powders, soaps, face creams, shampoo and perfumes and switch to the bedpan for all your domestic needs. For there's a lady who knows, all that glitters is gold… and in a couple of weeks I’ll post part two: The medical uses of urine.