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My descent into lockdown madness is complete

I bought a spiralizer. It came today.

I know what you’re thinking and it’s a filthy lie. I do not intend to make zoodles. I tried them once. As an interesting experiment in oven-roast zucchini, it would probably be okay. As a substitute for pasta, shit’s nasty.

No, I had a sudden and terrible craving for spicy curly fries. Can’t get them here. For all I know, you don’t eat them there any more, either.

There are a bunch of recipes floating around. I’m going to try baked rather than deep fried. Deep fryers scare me. I did a stint at Dunkin Donuts – the kitchen had a tile floor slippery with wet flour and I was sure some day I was going to slip and plunge my arm up to the shoulder in the Fryolater.

I have a vivid imagination when it comes to pain.

I couldn’t try a recipe at lunchtime. I remembered I had chicken stock that really needed to be made into soup, so I spiralized the hell out of all my soup vegetables. I liked the texture and it cut cooking time way down.

Any good spiralizer ideas?

p.s. I also bought a strawberry corer, but it’ll be three months until strawberry season. Look out – I’m a madwoman!

March 17, 2021 — 7:07 pm
Comments: 19

The most beautiful bong in the world

This is a find from a few years ago in Russia. Archaeologists were excavating the area to make room for power lines and found an ancient burial mound. It had clearly been plundered several times so they didn’t expect much, but at the bottom was a hard clay layer that seemed like a natural feature.

It wasn’t. Underneath was an intact burial, a rich find including this and another gold bowl.

It’s Scythian, a somewhat vague term for a nomadic people who operated 2,500 years ago in a huge area encompassing Western China, East to the Danube. Herodotus the Greek historian wrote about them.

When chemists analyzed the residue in the bowls, they found both opium and cannabis. One source said they were mixed in a drink, but another described it as smoking opium while using cannabis as incense. The latter backs up the description by Herodotus that “Scythians used a plant to produce smoke that no Grecian vapour-bath can surpass which made them shout aloud.”

He went on to add, “those guys were totally shitfaced. I mean, they were high off their asses all the time.”

What is it with these people and the assassins getting all shouty and stabby on cannabis? All I ever wanted to do was eat Hostess Ding Dongs and watch cartoons.

As usual, the best overview I found on this was from Ancient Origins, an embarrassing woo site. I guess because they key in on the quirky stories. But here it is from Archaeology, a more respectable choice. And one from the Independent, for good measure.

March 16, 2021 — 8:16 pm
Comments: 10

Paddy O’Furniture

Yeah. Irish jokes. We get a lot of that here.

I used to think I had much French but no Irish ancestry, based on family lore. Then I looked it up on ancestry.com and couldn’t find a lick of French (beyond my grandmother’s family having a French-sounding name) and several forebears who at least set sail from Ireland.

DNA testing wasn’t helpful here. They lump French and German together (and I definitely had a German grandma) and then all of the British (of which I am upward of 60%).

I think how this ethnicity thing works, I’m thus permitted to make Irish but not French jokes.

Psych! Everyone makes French jokes.

We are currently semi-binge-watching a French cop series called Spiral. Yes, it’s in French with subtitles and I don’t usually like subtitles, but we’re enjoying it very much.

Dark? Very, very.

Uncle B and I both took French classes as pups and we bark like seals when we understand a French word. Which isn’t all that often because those people talk fast.

March 15, 2021 — 7:53 pm
Comments: 10

Ooo! I want to try some…

It’s qurt. Also called qurut, kurt, kashk, jameed or chortan.

Sun-dried yoghurt balls.

Very high in protein and calcium, it was historically very important across Central Asia as a portable and nutritious food. It will keep without refrigeration for years. It can be dissolved into a beverage or a soup. They’re salty, apparently, and can be spiced in various ways. They go hard as little rocks eventually.

The article says it “gave nomads a strategic military advantage in the 12th and 13th centuries A.D.” So, like, are we not allowed to call them Mongols any more? Because we’re obviously talking Genghis and the boys here (who, probably coincidentally, were said to stink of sour milk).

On this subject, if you haven’t heard Dan Carlin on the Mongol Invasion, that’s eight hours of your life that you didn’t spend listening to Dan Carlin on the Mongol Invasion. Unlike me. Though I think I bailed after three. Hardcore is right.

I can’t find a local source. They give a recipe, but a) it looks like a lot of work and b) how would I know if I got it right if I never tried it before? Also, the British version involves blow driers, because wet little island. Phooey on this ‘multicultural society’ thing if I can’t even get qurt on a whim.

p.s. If you aren’t on Atlas Obscura’s mailing list, I highly recommend it. One of the few bits of solicited junk mail I get that I actually read.

p.p.s. Have a good weekend!

March 12, 2021 — 8:23 pm
Comments: 25

Lotta Zooming

Monday is the only day this week I haven’t had a Zoom meeting. Most of them were elective seminars, including an hour long talk on the object in the picture.

It is not, as it looks, a piece of cloth. It is an iron brooch that was used to fix a shroud in a burial in East Yorkshire. It has corroded into the shape of the fabric it held, which is how it has managed to survive over 2,000 years.

Fabric from the Iron Age. Holy shit.

The talk was by a British Museum employee who has tried to reproduce the fabric during her lockdown. It’s detailed enough that she’s been able to work out the weaving pattern and whether the yarn was twisted clockwise or counter-clockwise. This matters – where the warp and weft cross over each other, the fabric is tighter if both strands are moving in the same direction. But that means one direction has to be clockwise and the other counter-clockwise.

Trust me, it makes sense when you see it explained with diagrams.

On Saturday, I had an all-day seminar on East Yorkshire burials from the Prehistory Society. And I’ve decided I really, really like Zoom for this kind of thing. Comfy chair, big pot of coffee. Break for lunch and munch on stuff during the afternoon section.

They’re going back to in-person next year. I guess a big motivation for members is professional archaeologists meeting up at the pub afterwards, but it does seem a shame to those of us who just want to hear the talks and eat potato chips.

March 11, 2021 — 9:13 pm
Comments: 6

The shame

Larry the Number 10 cat has been put on a diet. Visitors have been slipping him too many treats. He is fourteen, an age when gentlemen cats may incline to podge, and has been in office for a decade.

His official title is Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, which started as a joke title used by journalists but was made official for Larry in 2011. He is a civil servant. He once had a scrap with Palmerston, the Chief Mouser of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, during which Larry lost his collar and Palmerston got a ripped ear. The latter has since retired to the country.

You’d probably need an FOIA to find out how many British government departments have an official cat.

Larry’s predecessor was Freya (whose tenure overlapped Larry’s) and before her Sybil (named after Sybil Fawlty).

Then ensued a ten year gap when Downing Street was catless on account of that evil hag Cherie Blair doing away with Humphrey.

Before Humphrey came Wilberforce (for whom Margaret Thatcher once bought “a tin of sardines in a Moscow supermarket”), Peta (a Manx cat whose real name was Manninagh KateDhu), Peter III and Peter II.

Nelson has no Wikipedia page, but he was the Chief Mouser of WWII and Churchill’s own cat whose tenure overlapped his predecessor Munich Mouser, whose tenure overlapped Peter I (they were deadly rivals). Churchill nicknamed the Munich Mouser after the Munich Agreement between Chamberlain and Hitler. What Chamberlain called him is not recorded.

And finally, Rufus of England (AKA “Treasury Bill”) who also doesn’t have a Wikipedia entry, but is the earliest Downing Street Cat on record (served 1924 to 1930). He had an allowance of a penny a day.

Budgetary records, anyway. There are reports of cats in government back to Henry VIII, when Lord Chancellor Cardinal Wolsey brought his cat to work with him.

The Downing Street Cat gets lots of press here because journalists are stuck outside #10 for long, boring stretches of time and hey look, a cat.

You can follow Larry on Twitter.

March 10, 2021 — 7:40 pm
Comments: 8

Ruin’t

As I cycled into work yesterday, I saw a young fox dead on the shoulder. Poor thing. I took a pic with my phone and thought, “I’ll post about that later.”

And then I got home and thought, “what the HELL is the matter with me that I would CONSIDER posting a picture of roadkill to my blog?!”

My brain is ruin’t.

So look at my coffee cup instead. I got it on Ebay. If you don’t recognize the logo, it’s Traitor’s Gate. Meaning this object is from the House of Commons.

I will be devastated if it turns out there’s a gift shop they sell these in, because I do so want to believe somebody pinched this from the canteen.

p.s. Don’t even ask what I think about the Meghan and Harry thing. I’m only physically capable of so much cringe before I sprain something.

March 9, 2021 — 8:48 pm
Comments: 6

Mondays, amirite?

Today, I have been struggling with a spreadsheet AND Twitter support (they suspended my work account, for some reason).

The only cure is to murder orcs horribly. Yes, that’s right. I’m playing Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, a seven year old game this guy called ‘morally repulsive.’

I thought it would be too repetitive, since you basically wander around an ugly gray landscape murdering ugly green orcs, but it’s clear the character designers has way fun designing the ugly green orcs.

You get closeup portraits of guys named Grubrok the Meat Hoarder and Ratbag the Cowardly who taunt you when they find you. Plus you learn a neat move for making an orc’s head explode in a shower of black goo.

I’ll give you morally repulsive.

It does, however, force me out of my comfort zone. I like to run up the side of the building, hide somewhere high and snipe. Queen of the headshot, me. And you can do that plenty, but you also have to get on the ground and swing a sword around to advance the story.

It will not surprise you to learn that I have the reflexes of a woman in her sixties, not a 14-year-old boy. That shit is hard.

Not the least surprised to learn that the developer was accused of pinching code from Assassin’s Creed. Nothing came of it, but can confirm there are serious ‘look and feel’ issues that don’t seem accidental.

March 8, 2021 — 9:04 pm
Comments: 9

No, I didn’t turn the tap on

If you look in the shiny chrome spout, you can see me! Real small! Taking the picture!

Do you remember the old Ebay reflection thing? Some years ago, people started to notice Ebay listings of shiny things – things like kettles and glasses and televisions – often showed the reflection of the photographer. Buck nekkid.

These got published on lists of “accidental” nudity, but it happened so regularly that the Internet ultimately decided it was a kink.

Seriously, who lists a second hand kettle for sale? And then takes a picture of it in the nude?

I won’t link to specifics, but if you do an images search of ebay photo nude reflection you can see lots tiny images of ugly naked people reflected in cheap tat. Because I’m sure you want to do that.

It’s the weekend! w00t!

March 5, 2021 — 8:26 pm
Comments: 7

Be a dear and pick me up a carton of egg

As far as I can tell, this is a real product. At least, it’s branded from a real farm, but a one-egg carton isn’t listed with their products. Their hens look happy anyway, don’t they?

Psych! Chickens never look happy. They can’t help it. They have glare-y eyes and the corners of their beaks turn down. They look perpetually furious.
 

Anyhoo – rejoice! It is the first three-egg day of 2021 for my little flock. I only have one girl who laid all through the Winter, and these only lay two or three a week at the height of Summer.

Three hens, three eggs. It’s a big deal. That means Spring for real.
 

 

 

March 4, 2021 — 6:57 pm
Comments: 11