So I'm making chicken stock. I'm trying to make good chicken stock, and that requires, well, chickens.

What I'm getting at is do NOT let me near an uncooked chicken carcass again. It looked like something out of a horror movie by the time I was done with it. Yes, I had bones covered with enough meat to give the stock good flavor (when it's done cooking; been simmering for an hour now and omg it smells amazing), and yes I hacked off enough meat to, after I bake it into a state where it falls apart when you stab it with a fork, it'll make a great addition to said great stock... HOW I've done it would make anyone with chef training just start sobbing with horror.

I'm just not sure I'll ever make chicken stock again just from bad I feel for what I've done to the poor chicken. XD

Today I will start my journey to the Mediterranean! Again! But this time I actually get to see things I haven't really seen before! Well, aside from at a slightly taller perspective, though I doubt that makes much difference with some things. "Oh my, I'm looking up at the statue of David's glorious ass from a minutely different angle. I think I see a dimple."

Rather ashamedly, a large part of the trip is going to be me counting down the days 'til we port in Belgium and I get to go off and romp through WWI cemeteries. Even going to see the beaches of Normady will not make my inner historian weep as I will when I go see the graves in Flanders. We get to stop by Tyne Cot Cemetery, which is friggin HUGE, and absolutely gorgeous. And we get to go into Ypres! I'm going to be so absolutely giddy. I'll have to try very hard not to be a dumbass. And then try very hard not to spend all the Euro's I beg from Mom on antiques. ...Just most of them. Because the conversion rate is atrocious and it'll make me poor when I pay her back. But, damnit, if I see That Perfect Artifact that I MUST HAVE I'm not going to let something like money stop me from getting it. ...so long as it's under a couple hundred Euros. I mean, when's the next time I'm going to be looking for WWI trench art in loving YPRES?!

YPRES. Eeeeeeeee!

I love this game. It's just so amazingly cute. I mean, amazingly cute. And all the little descriptions of the various plants and zombies are adorable enough I want to squeak. I'd like to share these from the plant almanac:

"Grave Buster:
Plant Grave Busters on graves to remove the graves.

Usage: single use, must be planted on graves
Special: removes graves

Despite Grave Buster's fearsum appearance, he wants everyone to know that he loves kittens and spends his off hours volunteering at a local zombie rehabilitation center. 'It's just the right thing to do,' he says."

"Potato Mine:
Potato Mines pack a powerful punch, but they need a while to arm themselves. You should plant them ahead of zombies. They will explode on contact.

Damage: massive
Range: all zombies in a small area
Usage: single use, delayed activation

Some folks say Potato Mine is lazy, that he leaves everything to the last minute. Potato Mine says nothing. He's too busy thinking about his investment strategy."

And, of course, the obligatory video that I'm sure I've already made everyone watch, but it is so cute.

IGN: At your developer roundtable this week, you showed off a single piece of artwork from the next Wii Zelda game. This piece of art has not yet been released publicly, but we noticed that Link appears to have grown to full adulthood. He looks older than he did in Twilight Princess. Is that a correct assumption?

Shigeru Miyamoto: Well, the story setting for this Zelda is, of course, in a completely different era and Link is older than he was previously. More approaching adulthood. There is one hint. Maybe from the art work you can see that he's not holding a sword.

IGN: Has he lost his Master Sword?

Shigeru Miyamoto: [Laughing] I just wanted to make sure that you understand we are making it. That's all I'm going to say on that subject.

--------

EEEEEEEEEE. I'm just going to be very literal here and just take this as MAYBE PERHAPS WE GET TO DO THE FIRST FORGING OF THE MASTER SWORD?!

I would geekgasm so hard they'd feel it in Russia.

When transcribing your recipes onto your site for the masses to peruse, do please avoid the term "carcass". When I find a five-stared recipe for chicken stock that asks me to toss in four pounds of chicken carcass, I am going to imagine a chicken that's been hit by a car and left to rot on the curb. This is hardly appetizing. What will I find next? "For this dish we will need a fish cadaver." It does not work So please work on your use of language.

Thank you,

Courtney

I have decided that the mama duck who's decided that our back yard is a good place for a nest could've chosen a much worse place, all things considered. She's going to have a doozy of a time getting her ducklings to the lake when they hatch (our yard is bordered by fenced dogs, though the one in the way of her path to the lake is rarely out there), BUT in light of our recent and considerably strong storms there can't be a much better place than against a stucco wall and beneath a very low, very thick evergreen bush. With a brambly, thorny rose bush on the evergreen's more vulnerable side.

Far as I can tell, her nest's only in danger from possums, and I haven't seen one around for well over a year, and my terrier... who is no longer allowed near those bushes. Damn dog'll get herself chopped up by thorns and an angry duck.

I've started going out there every day to take pictures and now I've taken to tossing bits of bread into the bushes. I hope I can get duckling pictures!! Duckliiings.... oh, the cute would just drop me dead.

As much as I really loved the new Star Trek movie... I... oh god, the yearning is festering in me so bad to watch a Star Trek movie that I not just loved but thought was great that nothing is going to stop me tomorrow from picking up a copy of The Undiscovered Country. And poor Ashley will have to listen to me gush about it. Come hell or high water, that DVD will be mine.

Our revels now are ended, Kirk. Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!

Seriously, man, watching this movie will be like visiting an old friend, or finding that one spot in your favorite couch. It's been way too many years.

Don't you love it when a fan belt breaks in your car after you buy a lot of fish at the grocery store on a hot day and you have to wait around for a half hour for a tow truck? I know I do.

...

*eyes fish fillets dubiously*

EDIT: I love how bad days make me a chef. Grilled tilapia topped with a creamy lemon-butter and capers sauce topped with chopped tomatoes and red onions. With a side of garlic couscous. Awesome, yo. Awesome.

Jeez, for the last few days I've been rummaging through lists of medieval variants of currently in-use names and... my goodness, I always forget how much our culture's phonetic tastes have changed over the centuries. So many harsh syllables! So many things that sound like I'm trying out some cross between a grunt and a garble!

But I finally found one that sunk its hooks into me! The 'Saunder' variant of 'Alexander'.

In other things, since I like... never update this damn thing, taking a stab at the GRE next week! Here's hoping I do all right for a first stab. XD I'm kinda out of practice as far as four-hour standardized tests go so it may take me a couple tries to get a score I want, but that's a-o-kay!

Also have applied for a job as a bank auditor, a position I actually have the qualifications for (much to my surprise), and I'm crossing my fingers for a callback because that is such a pretty salary, and it'd be such a nice compensation for having to stay in this pit of hellfire that is the banking industry.

One day, bank, I will be rid of you! I will shed the shackles of Bible-sized books of regulations!

I WILL NEVER HEAR SOMEONE SAY 'But isn't Switzerland a state?' OR 'But doesn't Canada have the same bank regulations?' OR 'You have no right to put a levy on my account just because I owe the government $20,000!'

Or my favorite 'I just got this check from Zimbabwe...'

...Surely there's a nice, small, friendly business somewhere that could use an untried baby accountant..? Somewhere? ....I come cheap!

Thank you, 4chan. Next stop, When You Give a Mouse a Hard-on.

Now this seems like a strange thing to come back to lj for, but it just made me bust out laughing, and right now that's a very very good thing.

I just found out that Leslie Fish, one of my favorite filk songsmiths, wrote Kirk/Spock slash.

So I'm trying to get to sleep, and for some reason it strikes me as a good idea to browse through ship_manifesto and via link of a link of a link there I am, staring at a Star Trek fanfic written by Leslie Fish from... god only knows when. Given her age, possibly the '70s. XD

How whacked is this??

...I'm curious, but I'm scared to read it. My childhood, damnit! XD

I have created my Death Knight.

...and... I'm in love.

I'm probably going to look like a freaking raccoon come tomorrow.

We lost our bellweather. ;3; By a freaking HAIR. 49-50% McCain, 49% Obama. The closeness makes me feel better about our record being sullied, but sullied it has been nonetheless.

Anyways, it looks like our mild Autumn may be over. Today was 70... tomorrow will be 50... Friday will be 40... and thus do we get back into the normal routine of "I hate you, Missouri-Weather. Be gone!"

With the win in Pennsylvania, it's pretty much certain that Obama's our next president. Thinking over the last day, because apparently depression is good for though or something, I've realized that it's not policy or the ability to handle Biden's prophesied international bru-ha-ha that's got me worried now, because Obama's an intelligent man, and um... to be a total geek is the Picard to McCain's Kirk. (Shit, no wonder I favored McCain; I'm a Kirk girl.) He thinks things through. Over and over. Aside from that stint with crack, he's shown himself to be a very practical man.

What I'm now wondering is how on earth is the man going to handle under the enormous expectations of his base and more-than-abundant fanatic followers? There seems to be a real expectation that he can snap his fingers and fix all the wrongs in America. To quote a woman at one of his rallies (at least as close I can remember), "I won't have to worry about paying for the gas to put in my car! I won't have to worry about mortgage payments!" While this is no doubt a fringe radical opinion, it's still a disturbing one.

He can use his position to influence policy, he can use his power of veto to stop what he doesn't approve of, but in the end the President doesn't really run the country. He can draft legislation, if he has the time to do so, and give it to a member to propose, but it's up to Congress to vote on, rewrite, vote on, and pass to him the potential laws that will bring change to the country. He can influence a direction by choosing staff, judges, ambassadors, etc that he believes will follow the ideals he has. Or at least do a damn good job.

What's disturbing to me is that it feels like the majority of the country really doesn't know what a President does, and when changes don't come as quickly as they want (or at all!, because let's face it. The secret service people will come in and say "Mr. Obama, we need to tell you some things about the situations you will now be handling" and the playing field he has to work with will change. Or other such scenarios that would end up with some plan or other of his derailed; plans don't usually make it past the first encounter blahblahblah) well, there's a big difference when you have low or no expectations and when you watch your high ones crumble at your feet.

So what happens when the American people who have raised this man on a pedestal as high as the Empire State Building are reminded that he's only a man?

However, the Missouri vote isn't in yet. If it goes McCain, I'll be glued to the tv because as goes Missouri so goes the nation and that would be the most improbable upset EVER. If it goes Obama, I'm counting the election over and watching cartoons.

And if the Missouri Bellweather is wrong I'll cry. I want our special status to stay special, damnit. XD

Am I really so obviously moonbat from a distance...? I was walking into work today, in slacks and a hoodie, and my hair was even COMBED, and a window cleaner calls down from the top floor, "Happy Halloween! Are you going as a nut? HA HA HA!"

Jee, thanks, jackass. Way to send my self esteem into the shitter for the rest of the day.

I've decided that more people need to handle political discussion the way my dad and his siblings do. Of the eight of them, one's dead (so he doesn't count), two are Republican (my dad and Aunt Jay), and five are Democrats (Uncles Tom, Joe, and Frank and Aunts Mag and Liz). Around these times of the years, every single phone call between the one side and the other begins with them arguing back and forth about how misguided the other's views are, how they need to get with the times, and really just what are they thinking? It winds down within five minutes to wondering just where they went wrong with their sibling and well if you want to be that stubborn, so be it. Then, because I guess the arguments are so old by now they've long passed into comforting ritual, without any bad feelings they move on to family news. Or, in the case of Uncle Frank, how much he wants to die. Because he's become a wet blanket in his old age.

It's pretty amusing to listen in on.

So yeah. More people need to keep it short and sweet, and know when to shut up and move on.

Also, my dad, the 70-yr-old former bank CEO, apparently still makes prank calls. He called up Aunt Jay, "On behalf of the Democratic National Committee--", and she slammed the phone down on him. It took calling back five more times before her husband answered the phone, and you could hear her yelling in the background "TELL THOSE PIECES OF SHIT TO STOP CALLING ME!"

( mad ramblings )

...never mind that I think they're both pretty bad choices because who the fuck puts up a legislator to be an executive. Two parties made up of idiots, that's who.

Mostly, though, I want this to be over with so people I respect, but don't share the same opinions as, can get their ever-loving minds back and stop spewing hateful shit around so I can respect them again without feeling like a nervous, abused dog.

That's right, VBA. Eat shit and die. Oh good god, it froze at the end of the Pokey battle. D:

WHY is there a toilet shaped like a duck???

Mother 3, you are weird.

...marry me.

Edit: And a bathroom full of ghosts?!

Edit 2: "A clean toilet is a mirror of the heart." ...uh huh.

Edit 3: AAAAAAH!!! ULTIMATE CHIMERA!! ...Ashley, you SUCK. ...so the Ultimate Chimera's potty trained??!!

Edit 4: ...the rows of Pokey statues peeing are disturbing.

Edit 5: Ashley, you must make me an Ultimate Chimera icon.

So this Hallow's Eve, my friend Jac and I decided to go to the Phantom's Pheast at our local renfest. We've never done this before... had no idea what on earth we were getting into.

We arrived a couple minutes late and the first thing we saw was a bunch of vampire whores turning a guy into their slave, while their other slaves hooted.

From then on it was complete B-movie horror/porno fair (without the actual porn, but the set-up (come on, a vampire brothel??, slaves wearing nothing but leather loin-cloths while writhing about in insanity?? Total porn set-up). The Madame of the house had stolen her (ex?)husband's chalice of immortality, needed blood of innocents...blahblah... Husband comes in, horrible forced Slavic accent and all, demanding his chalice back from his whore-wife. There were fights, spines being ripped out, corpses being eaten... Really it was all good fun. XD And the slave boys went about pestering the guests (when they weren't chained up). One decided he had to chew on my hair, so I was stuck the rest of the night with a glob of fake blood on my head. ...then another came over and licked me, and proclaimed I tasted just like sprinkles.

It's refreshing to be in a show where the actors don't know the meaning of Personal Space. XD The vamp-whores went about petting guys' heads, or pressing up against them. The slave boys were EVERYWHERE. Crawling about on the tables, climbing up to the rafters, trying to sneak up behind people. Just about anything they felt like, really.

The food was really good too!! Oh gosh, the pepper soup... *_*

Definitely going again next year. Apparently the show's changing! Hopefully it'll still be B-movie fair, because that was really fun. XD