A certain failure, by Richard W. Rahn
An interesting and informative article about the tax code.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
People Are Stupid in So Many Ways
1. I went to Vilnius for Easter with a dead camera battery by accident. I am stupid. But somebody else is stupid too: the guy who tried to sell me the wrong charger. It was 120 litai (authentic Sorny), which is way too much, but I didn't want to miss filming the Easter egg hunt to show my family stateside so I took it to the information booth next to the registers to make sure it worked (I suspected it wouldn't work because my battery model number was no where on the package). My suspicions were right on target; the salesman is stupid. Unless he was trying to trick me based on his experience of tricking others. Then he is shrewd but other people are stupid, so stupidity abounds either way. P.s. my clever suspicions cancels out my earlier stupidity & I ended up getting plenty of photos of the Easter egg hunt with a disposable camera.
2. I had a long day today because I had to get up early to get to the hospital to see my doctor; he works in a new place now and I guess isn't comfortable yet seeing me with no appointment without waiting in line, so I had to show up first. It's easy to be first as long as I show up before 8, because all the stupid people wait in line outside the hospital by a locked door not realizing the open side door twenty feet away goes to the same place. But there is a wait at that point already. When I left at 8:30 the line at the registration desk right inside the front door isn't ten dumbasses anymore, it about thirty. Instead of waking up a bit earlier to save I'm guessing an hour and a half, maybe two hours, these dickwads spend their entire morning waiting in line.
3. I had a really good other example of how people are stupid, but I can't remember anymore.
2. I had a long day today because I had to get up early to get to the hospital to see my doctor; he works in a new place now and I guess isn't comfortable yet seeing me with no appointment without waiting in line, so I had to show up first. It's easy to be first as long as I show up before 8, because all the stupid people wait in line outside the hospital by a locked door not realizing the open side door twenty feet away goes to the same place. But there is a wait at that point already. When I left at 8:30 the line at the registration desk right inside the front door isn't ten dumbasses anymore, it about thirty. Instead of waking up a bit earlier to save I'm guessing an hour and a half, maybe two hours, these dickwads spend their entire morning waiting in line.
3. I had a really good other example of how people are stupid, but I can't remember anymore.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Easter Fupdate
I'll skip to Easter this week since that's the most interesting (before that we did have awesome sausages, incidentally). We were so busy cooking (I) and cleaning (special lady) that we didn't even start decorating eggs until embarrassingly late in the day. But that's okay because Easter is two days long in Lithuania, and most of our guests didn't arrive until the second day. Photos of the food and eggs will come later, when I develop the film.
Sunday:
Herb Roasted Pork
Red Skinned Potato Salad
Green Beans
Broccoli with Bread Crumbs
Fresh Tomatoes and Cucumber
Cheese Garlic Biscuits
Authentic Curd Cake
Monday:
Chicken North Hudson
Chicken Liver and Pistachio Nut Pate
Colleen's Potato Crescent Rolls
Cold cuts from the left over meat
Notes
If you've been following the Fupdates you noticed that I made Herb Roasted pork a month ago. However, this was different: for Easter I got the biggest one they had, four and a half pounds; also I ended up being out of sage so I substituted a mix of seasonings so it was indeed something new. Especially new was the glaze, which I made this time anticipating the early doneness of the meat, which I didn't last time. The glaze is really really good, I spooned some drippings on every piece of meat I took.
Lokys would like the Potato Salad quite a bit: it includes two cups of mayonnaise and a pound of bacon for just two pounds of potatoes. Everybody else like it too, I'd say it was the most popular dish. To make this, if you're using cold smoked bacon, you should get five pounds, in case you eat two on the way home from the market and two more while you're preparing the dish. An additional note is that you should taste your bacon before cooking it: if it's on the salty side you won't need to add any salt at all.
The reason I called the curd cake authentic is that I could not find a single recipe for curd cake in English that used actual curd. Here's what the dictionary throws out:
I was looking for a recipe for curd, and all I could fine were recipes for things that "resemble" curd. What the fuck good is that??? And now a questions: it tasted alright to me, but my wife though it tasted a bit artificial due to all the pudding powder that went into it; does anybody know what I can use instead that will be more natural? Cause it was pretty easy, I'd keep it as a standby cake. The crust was especially tasty.
Green beans are disgusting. I added them because I felt guilty about having so few vegetables on the table, but I was unable to eat more than one bite. Maybe there is a tasty way to prep fresh green beans, but forget about canned ones. I solemnly pledge never to buy canned green beans as long as I live, even if that's a million years.
Both the biscuits and rolls got complements from my wife and guests. Personally I preferred the biscuits: they are much easier to make and for me, at least, tastier thanks to crunchiness and cheesiness.
It's hard to go wrong with Chicken North Hudson. It's my father's recipe, and the high fat content pretty much makes it sure fire. Just make sure you check your garlic ahead of time, mine was past its prime and I had to surgically remove bad parts from half of the cloves, as if I wasn't busy enough in the kitchen as it was. You cannot make it without at least a clove of garlic per pair of thighs.
The pate was the least popular dish, but I don't have enough pate experience to write a bad review. I thought it was too dry, so I added a half cup of whipping cream that happened to be sitting in the fridge. That improved the texture, and the taste was okay, but only about 5% of it got eaten. I think by the end of the week I'm going to be sick of pate for the rest of my million-year-long life.
Sunday:
Herb Roasted Pork
Red Skinned Potato Salad
Green Beans
Broccoli with Bread Crumbs
Fresh Tomatoes and Cucumber
Cheese Garlic Biscuits
Authentic Curd Cake
Monday:
Chicken North Hudson
Chicken Liver and Pistachio Nut Pate
Colleen's Potato Crescent Rolls
Cold cuts from the left over meat
Notes
If you've been following the Fupdates you noticed that I made Herb Roasted pork a month ago. However, this was different: for Easter I got the biggest one they had, four and a half pounds; also I ended up being out of sage so I substituted a mix of seasonings so it was indeed something new. Especially new was the glaze, which I made this time anticipating the early doneness of the meat, which I didn't last time. The glaze is really really good, I spooned some drippings on every piece of meat I took.
Lokys would like the Potato Salad quite a bit: it includes two cups of mayonnaise and a pound of bacon for just two pounds of potatoes. Everybody else like it too, I'd say it was the most popular dish. To make this, if you're using cold smoked bacon, you should get five pounds, in case you eat two on the way home from the market and two more while you're preparing the dish. An additional note is that you should taste your bacon before cooking it: if it's on the salty side you won't need to add any salt at all.
The reason I called the curd cake authentic is that I could not find a single recipe for curd cake in English that used actual curd. Here's what the dictionary throws out:
| 1. | Often, curds. a substance consisting mainly of casein and the like, obtained from milk by coagulation, and used as food or made into cheese. |
| 2. | any substance resembling this. |
Green beans are disgusting. I added them because I felt guilty about having so few vegetables on the table, but I was unable to eat more than one bite. Maybe there is a tasty way to prep fresh green beans, but forget about canned ones. I solemnly pledge never to buy canned green beans as long as I live, even if that's a million years.
Both the biscuits and rolls got complements from my wife and guests. Personally I preferred the biscuits: they are much easier to make and for me, at least, tastier thanks to crunchiness and cheesiness.
It's hard to go wrong with Chicken North Hudson. It's my father's recipe, and the high fat content pretty much makes it sure fire. Just make sure you check your garlic ahead of time, mine was past its prime and I had to surgically remove bad parts from half of the cloves, as if I wasn't busy enough in the kitchen as it was. You cannot make it without at least a clove of garlic per pair of thighs.
The pate was the least popular dish, but I don't have enough pate experience to write a bad review. I thought it was too dry, so I added a half cup of whipping cream that happened to be sitting in the fridge. That improved the texture, and the taste was okay, but only about 5% of it got eaten. I think by the end of the week I'm going to be sick of pate for the rest of my million-year-long life.
Monday, April 06, 2009
Naglas
It's good to be Naglas. What is Naglumas? I say it means excessivly active selfishness that may or may not be harmful to others: harmful as in cutting in line; harmless as in what I do. However, it's slang, and in this country the dictionary is too stuck up to define slang words. I've emailed somebody at the language control board to get an official verdict on what the proper word to use is instead, but he hasn't written back yet.
Saturday morning I went to pick up my external hard drive from the computer shop; I'd have to leave it there after serious mechanical failure left it a corpse. They'd told me the warrently was still valid, so I could get a new (blank) one or they could fix it for money. Fix it I said, wtf, I've got tons of information on there! When I went to pick it up, they'd allegedly fixed it and salvaged twenty gigabytes of the data (maybe 20%, but I told them that was 10%). I had agreed to a 200 lit price when I gave it to them, but what the hell, that was for the data, not a small part of the data. They explained that to check 320 gb of hard drive takes the same amount of time regarless of how much can be restored. I don't know anything about it, so what could I do but agree? Then at the last moment I asked if he could at least give me a pedagogue discount--I do keep an expired ITIC card in my wallet. I was going to say a 10% pedagogue discount, but good thing I didn't: he dropped the price by 25%.
Satruday evening I went to meet a couple buddies for a few brewskies, and we ended up going to Memelis. They had karioke going on and I saw somebody of there getting beers. I wasn't exactly sure what the deal was, because the singing was so bad that I spent at least haldf the fime we were there outside smoking my pipe jto get away from it. When one buddy signed us up for Yellow Submarine I asked if we'd get free beer.
"Will we get free beers?"
"No."
"I demand free beers!"
"I can't get you free beers unless I buy them for you myself."
"Perfect, so you'll buy us some beers if we sing?"
"Well no!"
"Well there's no way I'm singing then."
We were already on the list though and my friend didn't like the idea of getting on stage and not singing until we got some free beer, so I agreed to sing. In the middle of the song when there's no singing for a moment I yelled into the mic "We want free beer!" And then when the song was over I yelled "We're still waiting for free beer!" Well, I, the guy who was yelling for what he wanted all the time, ended up getting a free beer; my friend who just wanted to sing got nothing. Then he signed us up to sing New York, New York.* Who sings such a slow song at a bar? We sucked. It was way better when the next guys did Knockin on Heavan's Door.
*There was so little audience participation during the song that at the end of it I yelled "Klaipeda!" Apparently, naming the city you're in on stage does not always get you any applause.
Saturday morning I went to pick up my external hard drive from the computer shop; I'd have to leave it there after serious mechanical failure left it a corpse. They'd told me the warrently was still valid, so I could get a new (blank) one or they could fix it for money. Fix it I said, wtf, I've got tons of information on there! When I went to pick it up, they'd allegedly fixed it and salvaged twenty gigabytes of the data (maybe 20%, but I told them that was 10%). I had agreed to a 200 lit price when I gave it to them, but what the hell, that was for the data, not a small part of the data. They explained that to check 320 gb of hard drive takes the same amount of time regarless of how much can be restored. I don't know anything about it, so what could I do but agree? Then at the last moment I asked if he could at least give me a pedagogue discount--I do keep an expired ITIC card in my wallet. I was going to say a 10% pedagogue discount, but good thing I didn't: he dropped the price by 25%.
Satruday evening I went to meet a couple buddies for a few brewskies, and we ended up going to Memelis. They had karioke going on and I saw somebody of there getting beers. I wasn't exactly sure what the deal was, because the singing was so bad that I spent at least haldf the fime we were there outside smoking my pipe jto get away from it. When one buddy signed us up for Yellow Submarine I asked if we'd get free beer.
"Will we get free beers?"
"No."
"I demand free beers!"
"I can't get you free beers unless I buy them for you myself."
"Perfect, so you'll buy us some beers if we sing?"
"Well no!"
"Well there's no way I'm singing then."
We were already on the list though and my friend didn't like the idea of getting on stage and not singing until we got some free beer, so I agreed to sing. In the middle of the song when there's no singing for a moment I yelled into the mic "We want free beer!" And then when the song was over I yelled "We're still waiting for free beer!" Well, I, the guy who was yelling for what he wanted all the time, ended up getting a free beer; my friend who just wanted to sing got nothing. Then he signed us up to sing New York, New York.* Who sings such a slow song at a bar? We sucked. It was way better when the next guys did Knockin on Heavan's Door.
*There was so little audience participation during the song that at the end of it I yelled "Klaipeda!" Apparently, naming the city you're in on stage does not always get you any applause.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Fupdate
The theme this week is certainly Kugelis, which we ate four times for dinner as leftovers after last Sunday. Maybe next time I'll use less than seven pounds of potatoes. The other theme is chicken, since after the chili/kugelis adventures I hadn't had poultry in almost two weeks.
- Fried Kugelis slices with Fried Onions
- Chicken Fingers
- A Popeyesque Sunday Dinner: Fried Chicken and Red Beans and Rice
- Old Fashioned Potato Bread
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Do you take credit card?
Yesterday I had to mail a letter and if I paid for it with cash I wouldn't have enough for the micro bus home. I mean, I could have gone to an ATM, but I didn't feel like it. I felt like smoking my pipe and buying my wife some flowers...which turned out to be impossible without cash.
"It'll be 1.35 litai." ($0.52)
"Is it possible to settle by card?"
"Yes."
"Okay then."
What's the smallest bill you've ever paid by credit card?
"It'll be 1.35 litai." ($0.52)
"Is it possible to settle by card?"
"Yes."
"Okay then."
What's the smallest bill you've ever paid by credit card?
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