Saturday Morning Brain Drain [1/8/20]

What I watched: I randomly was sucked down the “Got Talent” rabbit hole on YouTube. I am mostly a pop culture philistine, so discovering that every country has a “got talent” was interesting… It was also a little scary, because there were commercials, and many were Trumpian or Republican; that should have told me right there that I am not the target audience? Anyway, here is a clip from a recent one.

What I read: Oh gosh, I read a bunch of fluff stuff. The Book of War (The Last Oracle 8) by Melissa McShane, an author I have previously mentioned, a few more of John P. Logsdon’s books, including Bethany Black, New York Paranormal Police Department Box Set, and started on William Massa’s Hexecutioner series (these are just 99 cents a pop).

What I listened to: Taking Over by Joe Goddard from taking Over:

Time Moves On by Phantom Planet from Devastator:

And Wild and Blue by Voltage from Desire:

So, dear DeadSplintertarians, how was your week? What did you watch, read, listen to, or do? Please let us know how you are doing, and what’s up with you!

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About Elliecoo 540 Articles
Four dogs, one partner. The dogs win.

23 Comments

  1. Ah, you know, hurricanes and whatnot. Fortunately, Trump is all over this one, robotically reading warnings in an Adderall-induced haze on the news. Since Mar-a-Lago is at risk, he’s gonna save us all. Plus, he gets to posture for a state full of voters that increasingly hate him. Of course, he’ll manage to steal a healthy portion of the disaster relief funds. Time to upgrade the fairways!

    • Apparently the name of the current hurricane Isaias means “God Is My Salvation”. We certainly know that salvation will not be coming from the white house. I hope that you weather the weather in safety.

      • Thank you, but this is a pretty sorry excuse for a hurricane. Actually, I should say it’s just right. When they hug the coast and dump a lot of rain, it helps us out with recharging the aquifer and eliminating the threat of drought. There’s no real danger unless someone is really stupid and goes surfing or takes a boat out. The only property at risk is rich people’s along the coast, and they won’t be inconvenienced at all, ’cause rich. 

  2. watching..eh nothing worth mentioning..same for reading
    listening too…anyhoo..i thought i had a good one to share from foreign the voice
    but it was actually foreign idol


    me like
    tho…on the local voice this dude happened some years ago…..dudes damn close 

  3. Watched – Indian Matchmaking on Netflix. I know, I know, but it was late, I was tired, and I didn’t want to think. May the universe forgive me but I liked it. I will probably watch another episode tonight. I also watched the episode of The Monkees you posted. I liked it too and am much less embarrassed by that.

    Reading – Wonder Years by Geraldine Brooks. Because I just can’t get enough plague apparently. It was her first novel, and I am going to look for her other works too.

    Listening to – Everyone’s DUAN submissions from last night. And Season 2 of The Sneak podcast. It’s about Murph the Surf. I’ve heard the name but didn’t know anything about this guy. What a story!

    • Please do not be embarrassed, I read about that show, and the consensus appears to be that although it is cringe-worthy in places, it is oddly enchanting. Enjoy!

  4. Watched:  The Torture Report on Prime.  It was a good reminder for me to not get too nostalgic for the halcyon days of Dubya.
     
    Read:  Nothing of consequence.
     
    Listened:  Thanks to Loveshaq, I’ve been spending more time checking out Bump Kitchen.


     

    • Right? One of the best parts of DeadSplinter is having my horizons expanded, whether it is musically, keeping up on daily politics, or otherwise. I bet I make Spotify’s suggested music algorithm cry, because of all the varied additions thanks to DUAN people. From Hawaiian slack guitar to Mongolian heavy metal, there is good music being shared!

  5. You will appreciate this.
     
    I watched my husband make dinner for us Thursday night. He heated up pre-made hamburger patties in a saucepan he’s seen me use a million times (we have a stovetop grill appliance that his mother bought for us/me) and put a bag (contents removed, thankfully) of frozen shoestring French fries on a baking sheet in the oven at about 150 degrees (F). 
     
    I had only asked him to pick up some potatoes so I could make a big batch of potato salad. I was going to do this same meal with ground beef we had in the freezer. Just differently, and just FYI.
     
    So I’m sitting there in the kitchen area with the loyal hound observing this, biting my tongue bloody. My husband didn’t attempt to make potato salad. No. He bought two huge tubs of deli potato salad. “I bought your favorites!” Meaning what I make myself, for us. One was a vinegary German potato salad and the other was a mayonnaise-y potato salad with egg. My husband, who has observed me in the kitchen for 1/3 of a century, scooped the contents of both into a large bowl and combined. He then (because he thinks cooking must involve as many kitchen implements as possible; my fault) apportioned a good chunk of this into separate bowls that we could eat along with our hamburgers and our barely re-warmed French fries.
     
    It wasn’t that bad, actually. I’ve eaten worse. Have you ever been to the Alsace region of France? It goes back and forth, Germany/France/Germany/France. Their local dialect is as offense to German- and French-speakers alike. The “cuisine” is…what it is.
     
    I decided to get back at my well-meaning husband yesterday. It was Meatless Friday for us, so I rooted around and found a nice big can of lump crab. We also had a lot of eggs. I was going to make a couple of crab omelets, those are super-simple, but I decided to twist the knife. My husband loathes Elizabeth Warren for many reasons. He’s a native of Boston and she’s an import. She, for decades, has pretended to be a Cherokee and my husband  actually had a full-blooded grandmother who was part of the Cherokee Nation (there are three parts, if not more) but he doesn’t claim any kind of affiliation because why would he. We have a geneaologist in the family who discovered one of my ancestors was probably Welsh. We’ve been here for centuries, and not taken in bondage, maybe in some kind of indentured servitude, but what would the Welsh connection mean to me 400 years later? 
     
    Anyway, getting back to my cold omelets with crab. Elizabeth Warren transcribed pretty much word-for-word a Pierre Franey recipe for this and submitted this in a “Pow Wow Chow” self-published family recipe book? 
     
    There are worse sins that a politician can commit. Nonetheless, my husband works in finance and loathes Elizabeth Warren. When he is restless in bed and murmuring in his sleep I will whisper in his ear, “President Elizabeth Warren” That snaps him awake.
     
    To conclude, finally, last night I made a very simple version of this. You make four small, very thin, almost tortilla-like, egg pancakes. For lack of a better word. While they’re cooling you take out your big can of lump crab meat, put it in a bowl, and go to town. You want to keep the lump crab as lumpy as possible so I gently introduce a little mustard and squeeze a little lemon juice on it. You could use good herbed mayonnaise but that depends on your tolerance for egg/mayo combos.
     
    You take your cooled omelet pancakes and plate them. Then, you apportion your crab filing on one side of each and fold over. 
     
    The Pierre Franey/Elizabeth Warren–Cherokee “Pow Wow Chow” recipe is complicated and confusing. If you try it, and I’ve done it, but I wouldn’t do it again, what it’s saying is that you make the little mini-omelets and put them aside. Then, and this is where it gets tricky and vague, you make a “mayonnaise.” You take half and add it to the crabmeat. So that makes the mixture. You smear the crab mixture on one half of your crab filling on one side of your eggy tortilla and fold over.
     
    You reserve the other half of your mayonnaise and (in the original recipe this pops up out of the blue) you serve it over a salad. The crab filling is referred to as dressing, so that’s not the salad, but I make crab salad all the time.
    This recipe originally appeared in Pierre Franey’s NY Times column and again in his book “The 60 Minute Gourmet” in the late 70s.  
     

    • Good story! We all have our strengths, sound like you are, by far, the chef in the family. My mother was not much of a cook. Keitel still shudders when he talks about her fancy salad of shredded carrots, dried raisins, and mayonnaise. 

      • My husband isn’t that bad at it, I have a couple of siblings who are far worse, but he’s not intuitive. This is probably TMI but his father was a cook in the Navy. He’s Black (with that Native grandmother; she was his father’s mother) and his mother, his Dad’s wife, hated cooking. So he grew up eating like he was on board a destroyer right after WWII. 
         
        My experience wasn’t much different. My father was also in the service but he was white so he wasn’t relegated to kitchen duty. That’s a whole other story, the roles men were asked to do in the segregrated Navy in the 1940s.
         
        Where was I? Oh yes, with Thursday’s burger bonanza and last night’s cold omelets with crab payback behind us, it’s time to make dinner. My Forager brought back a ton of bacon along with his pre-packed hamburger patties and other goodies. I don’t know why. We’re meat lovers but we don’t make a ton a bacon. 
         
        So…pancetta! Kind of. It’s cool enough and I have enough a/c that I can make a ragù out of the bacon, that’s what I’m doing now. The dog is doing a celebratory tarantella in anticipation. 

        • My father, too, was in the navy, from1935 to 1960. He was an NCO, in charge of the big guns on the destroyers. One of 17 children born to a logger/farmer, the service was his way to escape poverty. He performed well but was told he could not be a line officer because his teeth were discolored from malnutrition as a child. Not the right look…

  6. I’ve gotten Kinja’ed over here twice now, when I tried to opo open new windows to get some links, so I’m link in replies to this comment, instead😉
    I haven’t done any watching lately–too busy between the Grocery Store, and with some… I guess potentially *big*-ish ideas rolling around in my head (gotta love ADHD-brain 🙄😉🤣)…
    The ideas got sparked, because I’m on the inaugural “inclusion & diversity” (or whatever the fancy name for it is, anyway😉), at my ECSE school site.
    OBVIOUSLY, when we were offered a chance to join the team for it’s formation past spring, I signed up… and the events both here in MN, and all over really, have shown other folks in my school (finally!) why it’s so important we have one. 
    Because if you’re someone with a heart beating in your chest, you can’t help but look at our kiddos, and see that any of them in 6+ years could be the next Tamir Rice, Mr Phil, Big Floyd, or another Lorenzo Doby, too.💔
    And in particular, with us being SPED programming, and the documented disparities nationwide, of Black boys in particular, but ALSO Native, Hispanic, and other POC boys being recommended for SPED services & receiving Dx’s that are typically MUCH more stigmatized than the ASD or ADHD Dx’s white peers exhibiting the SAME behaviors *may* be receiving… I joined the advisory team…
    And I’ve been doing a LOT of both researching & thinking. In part, much of it spurred by an abstract in Spectrum News, on Vaccine Hesitancy in Parents of kiddos Dx’d with ASD, and the breakdowns of *why* those parents are hesitant, broken out by race… 
    It tracks, and has parallels & overlaps, with THIS article, on what happened a few years back, here in MN, when a communication gap wasn’t really noticed, between school & state medical folks, and our local Somali population ocer in Cedar-Riverside–where the Antivaxxers were then able to come in, peddle their bulletin, convince many Somali parents to *not* vaccinate their tiniest, Annandale then we had a big ‘ol measles outbreak…
    My thoughts are leaning in many directions right now, but mostly along the lines of 1. HOW do we ensure better, more culturally-aware training, for the bunch of “nice white ladies” who are the primary base of staff in our schools? 2. How do we ensure that our kiddos’ families TRULY understand the Dx’s that their children are given, that they understand the resources given, that they CAN successfully navigate the confusing systems out there set up to “help” them, etc. 3. How do we ENSURE we are teaching our kiddos ethically, in both an educationally appropriate manner, but ALSO in culturally appropriate ways? 4. How do/can we get it, so that we in Ed are able to access GOOD information… and how do we get those things into the core requirements of our Early Childhood, SPED, and Gen-Ed teacher-training curricula? (Because SERIOUSLY, things like Child Psych–a BASIC understanding of how the brains of kiddos with different Dx’s *isn’t* a required class, for SPED majors!?!?!!!😯😲😳😳😳)…
    There are SOOOOOOO many different-but-related issues all rolling around in my noggin the last while, and while in some ways, I feel like the meme of Charlie from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I also feel like there IS a way somehow (especially since the pandemic is literally unending Education right now!😉), to enact some real, GOOD, changes to the structure of the ways we educate staff, and the ways we approach Special Education & educating families…
    On the one hand, I LOVE having ADHD brain, and that the way mine is set up let’s me see inefficiencies in systems & solutions for those, pretty easily…. it’s been really handy, in my past jobs, when I could observe situations for a while, then ask, “Why are we doing…. and could we maybe…… instead?” Because most times–perhaps because I was bringing a solution, too?–the answer was usually “YES!!! We CAN try that!”
    But right now, I’m seeing all these overlapping & parallel-running… problems I guess is how I’d term them… and I’m NOT in any sort of position to fix them, and kinda at a bit of a loss right now, as to *who* to even, really, begin talking to about (although I DO have a couple ideas!😉💖)
     
     

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