The Dilettante's Dilemma

This…might be awesome. From Serious Eats, the Aussie burger, a burger topped with cheese, fried egg, avocado, and roasted beets:

BURGER!

The author actually puts avocado on in place of BACON. Very, very few things in my world can ever be used in place of BACON. In fact, avocado might be the *only* thing you could replace bacon with in a recipe that would not incur my wrath. But I think this burger would work either way (or with both - what the hell?)

Also, personally I can take or leave an egg on top of a burger — I’ve never felt that it adds anything. So leave that off. But beets? That is a potentially brilliant topping. As the author says, “Especially counterpoint to a crispy, griddled, well-salted patty, the sweet earthiness of a roasted beet works wonderfully.”

So: burger with cheese, BACON and/or avocado, and roasted beets (on a Martin’s potato roll, which is absolutely the best bun option). Potential genius. Must make sure to buy beets at the market tomorrow morning.

I picked up a bottle of Zout at the store the other day. With spring approaching, we’re looking at lots of crawling around in the dirt, so in an attempt to not have the girls live a “wear once and discard” lifestyle, we figured it was a good idea to pick up some sort of special pre-treating cleaner, and word on the street is that Zout is among the best.

Apparently it’s so good that it comes with a guarantee:

Stains Gone. Guaranteed.

Pretty cool, right? They’re so confident in their product that they guarantee it will work. Of course with any guarantee it’s good to look at the fine print and see what, exactly, they’re guaranteeing:

Buh?

“If you are not satisfied that Zout Stain Remover removed the mentioned stains we will refund the cost of your Zout Stain Remover purchase only.”

So far so good…

“Does not apply to garments treated with Zout Stain Remover.”

That makes absolutely no sense. The way I read that, it says that they won’t refund your purchase if you use the product to try to get stains out. But of course, that’s the only way you’re going to know whether it actually worked, right? If you don’t put the Zout on the stain, how are you going to know whether or not the Zout got the stain out? But according to them, as soon as you put the Zout on the stain, the guarantee is void.

I’ve been trying to come up with an alternate meaning for this, but have been unable too. I have a call in to the nice people at Zout, and if they call back I’ll ask them if, in fact, the guarantee is void if you actually use the product.

Just one of several thousand

Thank you for visiting our state for the last six weeks. I suppose it’s too much to ask for you to now present a more nuanced view of the state than “blacks with guns in Philly; whites with guns everywhere else,” but a guy can dream.

Please take a “Ron Paul For President” road-side sign with you on your way out.

PS: Before you go, can you tell me why Obama won Union County? I understand why he won Centre (Penn State), Dauphin (Harrisburg), Philadelphia, Delaware, and Chester (Philly), and Lancaster (Philly sprawl). But why Union?

To my three or four regular readers, I apologize for my absence. Things have been crazy around here for a while, and I’m just now sort of settling down.

I spent the last few weeks in a state of nervous exhaustion — in addition to our multiple trips in March, I’ve been in the process of applying for a job, and it’s taken forever. It was really quite an involved process — I had a long phone interview, went in for a first interview, went back in for a second interview with the president of the company, sent over reference and writing samples, and then sat by the phone for well over a week waiting for resolution, which finally came on Friday.

Unfortunately the resolution was that I didn’t get the job, but all is not lost because the company is apparently doing some more hiring in the near future. Possibly for a more junior job, but I really like this company and am willing to take a more junior position, and its concomitant hardships, for the chance to work there and hopefully work my way up. So we’ll see what happens there.

But the last couple weeks really feel like lost time. Lots of things fell by the wayside, most notably work of any kind. That includes writing here, especially since I’ve started doing some freelance writing, and it was especially hard to justify writing on The Dilettante’s Dilemma for free when I could be writing for pay.

But a great weekend has given me a little recharge, and things are good. I got to spend quality time with my family and friends, the primary is (finally) here, the sun is shining, the Cubs are winning, and just about everything is right with the world. I even got some of the backlogged freelance assignments, and hopefully I’ll be back to writing here semi-regularly as well.

I’m sitting at HIA, waiting to catch a flight that will take me to Indianapolis (via Dulles) for my fourth straight weekend out of town. This one is the only business trip of the bunch, but I realized that I hadn’t posted about any of the things we’ve done over the last three weeks.

So over the next few days I’ll be catching everyone up on our trips to:

1. New York City
2. Baltimore
3. Connecticut

Lots of fun was had by all, friends and family were seen, museums were visited, and many miles were put on the trusty van.

Now, though, I have to close up shop and get on my flight…

I went to see Mike Doughty at the Chameleon in Lancaster last night. Despite the poor sound (I’ve never seen a show there before so I don’t know if it’s like that all the time or if it was just bad last night), Doughty and his band put on a fine show, heavy on stuff from the new album but with a few Soul Coughing faves and one excellent cover.

Because there is no Doughtybase of shows and set lists (is there?), here’s what he played:

Tremendous Brunettes
I Wrote a Song About Your Car
Navigating By the Stars at Night
Circles
St. Louise Is Listening
American Car
Grey Ghost
I Hear the Bells
Wednesday (No Se Apoye)
More Bacon Than the Pan Can Handle (with Mike playing the sampler)
I Just Want the Girl in the Blue Dress to Keep On Dancing
Fort Hood
Ossining (thanks, Candice)
The Gambler (the Kenny Rogers classic)
Put It Down
27 Jennifers
Looking at the World From the Bottom of a Well

I would loved to hear some other old stuff, like “Only Answer” or “Thank You Lord For Sending Me the F Train,” but the only thing I’m really bummed he didn’t play was “Madeline and Nine”:

All my life I’ve been slow and senseless
Not struck dumb, I’m just dumb that’s all
But I can give you the constellations
Lay down here and we’ll count them all

But who knows, maybe I’ll get to hear him play it when he plays for free at ABC Brewery in May as Jersey Mike comes through with another fantastic live show. You know I’ll be there!

There is no possible way in hell that Muxtape is legal. A site that lets you upload any song you want to a 12-song “mixtape” which anyone can then stream online? Nuh uh. Not even if you include this:

“By uploading a song you agree that you have permission to let Muxtape use it.”

Yeah, like that’s going to assuage an industry known to sue children over downloading music.

Buy hey, it’ll be fun while it lasts. Here’s mine, a Muxtape version of my “imaginary set list” from a few weeks back:

Part One: We Dig For The Bones Of An Idol
Part Two: It’s All A Sweet Fleeting Feeling

Finally I understand what happened with the whole sub-prime mess, thanks to this Google Docs primer.

Seven-plus years in, our president has done something I’m in favor of. I’d say that’s worthy of a post.

I’m pretty surprised about this, but I heard President Bush on the radio yesterday, taking a stand on an issue, and I agreed with him. Bush was in Kiev, Ukraine, on his way to Romania for the NATO summit, and while there he expressed his support for Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO. Russia strongly opposes this move, and apparently has the French and Germans scared enough that their making noises about opposing it as well.

Bush said that “helping Ukraine move toward NATO membership is in the interest of every member in the alliance and will help advance security and freedom in this region and around the world” and I actually agree with that. Given the propensity of Vladimir Putin to rule Soviet-style, I think we need something to balance him in eastern Europe, and while NATO is far from ideal it’s what’s available. So, yeah, Let Ukraine and Georgia in, and how about the Baltics, too, while you’re at it?

The cynical among us might suggest this is all just posturing to counteract Russia’s opposition to our missile defense system. Could be, but if the end result is NATO on Russia’s borders, that works for me. Besides, there’s no way that missile defense system can built in the next 200 days, right?