Mildly Hurtful Sarcasm

Meaningless ranting, just like everybody else.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

My new menu item I - Chicken sandwitch

Dining out is really not an option for me, cause I'm by myself; and I don't want to miss my TV shows. I can have take out, but I really don't feel like standing there waiting. So I cook every night. Yeah, I cook, every night.

Having lived by myself for almost 15 years (at least 6 months out of every year), I am sick to the stomach of chicken spaghetti, which I made almost every night. I tried rotating pasta sauce (five cheese five herbs roasted onion roasted tomato garlic mushroom meat meat balls minced sausages alfredo fernado roberto and all sorts of other Italian stuff), didn't help (and there're only that many things you can marinate chicken with). I even tried oriental styles - black bean, garlic, soy sauce, teriyaki, better but only lasted a while.

So the captain's decree is: abandon the pasta ship.

In search of a new entree in my very short menu, salad came to mind. I discovered how to make a good chicken salad by accident - one time I forgot to plastic wrap my cooked chicken breasts and left them in the fridge overnight. So you have dehydrated chicken breast pieces, add eggs, pre-washed mixed greens and either thousand island or balsamic onion or honey mustard, then tear up a piece of toast. It works as lunch but I want something hot.

The other day I was lining up at the cafeteria, watching Juan served up the most popular item at the grill - chicken sandwich - it hit me, I can do that, that's easy! I can make some very elaborate stuff, but ease is my top priority nowadays during weekdays.

I buy these dinner rolls in bulk, normally $1 for 3, cut them in half. Spread some salad dressing on one side (something acidic), no butter's needed cause the chicken got grease. Toast it lightly (on a fry pan or a toaster oven) while I fry the chicken. Its chicken breasts sliced thin marinated with pepper and soy sauce or perhaps soaked in brine if I remembered to do that the night before. Sprinkle a little lemon pepper and lay a piece of garden variety Kraft singles on the top after turning off the heat and skillfully center it on the bread. Add a sheet of lettuce (head or green leaf doesn't matter) and optionally a few slices of tomato (tomato is tricky because you can't stock too much of them up, they go bad quickly) and that's it. With chicken spaghetti I have to clean a pot a pan a plate and a fork. With chicken sandwich, it's just a pan and a plate which doesn't even get sauced up/greased up nearly as much.



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Thursday, July 24, 2008

Porcelain kitty

My old buddy Tony from high school gave me a handmade porcelain figurine as a gift. Its a playful kitty rolling over on a traditional Japanese cusion. I have it on my bed side next to my other figurines.



Thanks Tony.

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Monday, July 21, 2008

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

I am not an Adam Sandler fan. In fact I think the actor's movies are mostly a bit too silly. But I caught him on Punch-Drunk Love (2002) this afternoon on TV and I thought it was interesting. Playing a dark comical character Sandler did not deliver an awe-inspiring performance but it's definitely a role that fits him perfectly. I didn't get some of the interesting imagery (silhouette of a running Sandler for example), the storyline wasn't believable and the main character is not someone you would normally identify with; just the same director and writer Paul Thomas Anderson has put together enough material to let you understand (and feel for) Barry, and made the situation and everything else all work together in a comforting way. It's an interesting movie.

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Thursday, July 17, 2008

My pictures VI

Matching up pictures can be interesting. I first visited Peru in the summer 1996.



The city of Arequipa was so beautiful we would eventually retrun in 2006, almost 10 years later. The fountain at the center of Plaza de Armas is now fenced up with chains, but the pigeon defecation is business as usual.

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Monday, July 14, 2008

Another neighborhood kitty

I headed straight to the mailbox today when I got home, because I did not check my mail yesterday, and after I locked the box I heard a rattle. It was a kitty walking on my fence (you know how they like tight rope walking). I pssst'ed so he'd notice, and he did. He checked me out, then jumped into my backyard.

I rushed into the garage and entered my backyard from there and underneath the bushes I saw his white little paws. I bowed down to look and he meowed a warning, how dared him. I inched forward not wanting to scare him away but he apparently knew whose backyard it was, and turned and quietly slipped away.

I pursued, through my driveway to my neighbor's front parking space, slowly, gently but always making enough noise with my steps so as to not startle him, until he finally made a stand under an Audi.

I crouched to flirt, he meowed fiercely a few more times. I pretended to be scared and backed off a bit. He settled down on his side, and wiggled his tail like he didn't give a shit, you know how they're all like that.

I gently moved closer, making kitty noise, extending my olive branch hand. He checked me out a few times then finally couldn't resist and rushed to me. He threw his forehead towards my palm so I would pet him. I gently but firmly combed the top of his head, then his body, then his tail that's straighten in excitement. It wasn't long before he started purring. It's the neck rub that he enjoyed the most, just a few was enough to make him roll over and squint at me. He would walk away and quickly turn back for more petting. He would climb up my knees to get a more intense rub. A few times he'd grab my hand with his paws, claws and all, and bite me, (always gentle enough not to do any real damage) and then stare at me in that playful victory look.

So we played for five, ten minutes until some neighbor's Camry passed by and caught his attention. He broke off and settled down on the ground and ended our get-to-know-each-other-thingy. He had beautiful green eyes and no collar. His fur was even but real dusty and lacked shine. Must be a poor young homeless kitty who doesn't get much love I reckoned. I wanted to feed him my can tuna but I wasn't sure if the brine would make him sick. I wish I had stocked some kitty food at home.



I had groceries in that car that I needed to put into the fridge so I slowly walked back while saying goodbye. He just gave me the I-don't-give-a-shit look. You know how they're all like that.

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Friday, July 11, 2008

Mobile Home Disaster

Similar to the ABC hit show Extreme Makeover Home Edition, the team at Mobile Home Disaster picks one worthy family in a southern California mobile home neighborhood each episode and transform their slum into beautiful living space.

I don't watch EMHE and don't normally tune in to CMT but MHD caught my attention. It's obviously a low budget production with economical sendaway destinations and mediocre makeover results. But comedian and host John Caparulo makes up for the lack of luxurious bathtubs with whacky cracks and unforgiving sarcasm.

Full episodes of Mobile Home Disaster are available for viewing on CMT's website. It's worth watching.

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Monday, July 07, 2008

Firefox 3 features II - Certificate warnings

In my previous blog posts I talked about how people unjustly advertised Internet Explorer 7 as inferior to Firefox 2. I can't be sure but I think most of them were just blindly taking side (cause within the tech community, supporting open source makes you geeky, and to these losers, being geeky is strangely a good thing...). The truth is, IE7 came with alot of good features not found in Firefox 2. Case in point, another new Firefox 3 feature comes right out of Internet Explorer 7 is its HTML based invalid certificate warning.

Traditionally browsers and its helper components (such as Java) produce alot of popups, so much so people no longer read the warnings before they hit enter. But the prevalence of online shopping and banking makes it important to root out impersonated sites, and that sometimes means a stronger warning to the user not to enter a site if its certificate is not trusted.

While Firefox 2 still showed a much-ignored-too-wordy-too-geeky-dialog...


... Internet Explorer 7 had abandoned its dialog and forced the user to make a conscious decision with a web page based warning.


This switch is a good thing, so much so, Firefox 3 followed suit.


But in my opinion, the folks at Mozilla still haven't gotten it right. Showing the error code that's utterly useless to the user adds to the confusion, not to mention it forces a permanent add of an untrusted certificate to the certificate store. That's no biggie of course. What I am upset about is seeing people who don't know their shit write reviews on reputable magazines.

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Saturday, July 05, 2008

The 4th parade

Perceptually this year's Independence day is celebrated more loudly than previously. You just hear "you have a great 4th" at the office so much more often than before. And for the first time since I moved here, a parade is held right at my door step (I live right on the main street in town). Families lined the pedestrian and median of the road, cheered and clapped trying to create a festive atmosphere in futile because of their small number. Sparsely populated marching groups and lack of band music made the event even less yawn-resisting. But I was waken up by the noise (from the police patrol's engine revving, not the people) so just the same I took a few pictures.

You've got little trumpet carrying green men with no music


You've got a vintage police car which, consider the city's budget, may very well be still in service


You've got some very old gears... and look, a steam engine too (I am a bad person)


No parade is complete without men in skirts

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