THE GURGLING COD

So I can see what you ain't doing

Living with a blogger is not all free cookbooks and hilarious press releases. Just ask the cinetrix. The Gurgling Cod is primarily focused on food, while pullquote is about cinema. But the cinetrix has gotta eat, and now and again, The Gurgling Cod will take in a picture show. So it was with great dismay that I learned that Werner Herzog, who should know better, is remaking Bad Lieutenant w/ Nic "Con Air" Cage. The only way this project redeems itself from utter suck is if it means a payday for Schooly D.
Schooly D:  Signifying Rapper.mp3

Blessings

Scratch that last post, and the stuff about an uneasy time. Instead, on a sunny Friday morning, the Cod is feeling blessed. Blessed to live in an era of such unprecedented peace and prosperity not to mention general salubriousness, that a senior elected official has the time and space to pursue, Ahab-like, a personal sports-related vendetta. If only this guy had been around in '63, we might have gotten to the bottom of that whole JFK thing.

Recipegate does not bother me

The Trib gets after the post recipegate era with some putatively actual politicians' receipts. Sadly no sign of the Daley family's famous Hippie Fricasee. Especially with the Obama Family Chili, we return to the vexed question of originality.  Here it is, in all its glory:

Obama family chili

1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
1 pound ground turkey or beef
1 Tbsp. chili powder
1 tsp. salt
1/4  tsp. each: ground cumin, ground turmeric, dried basil leaves, dried oregano leaves
3 Tbsps. red wine vinegar
3 tomatoes, chopped
1 can (15 ounces) red kidney beans

1. Heat olive oil in large skillet over medium-high heat; add onion. Cook, stirring, until softened and lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and green pepper; cook, stirring, 1 minute.

2. Add turkey; cook, stirring to break up meat, until cooked through, about 5 minutes. Stir in chili powder, salt, cumin, turmeric, basil and oregano; cook, stirring, 2 minutes. Stir in vinegar. Add tomatoes; cover.

3. Heat to a boil; reduce lower heat to a simmer. Cook 30 minutes. Add kidney beans; cover. Cook 20 minutes.

Obama's receipt is far from original, but it would be preposterous to accuse him of stealing something, as this is one version of a commonplace American vernacular dish. All this is to point out just how stupid and lazy you would have to be to appropriate a receipt in a way that clearly indicated it was cut and pasted.
I mention all of this to express my irritation with the idea of "electability." I'm not any happier than you are that the choices are the soft and inexperienced guy, the tainted and increasingly shrewish lady, and the coelacanth. But not to vote for one of them, cause you are not sure if America is ready for a black president, is bullshit. It is exactly the same bullshit as the "I got nothing against them personally, but if my neighbor sells his house to one, property values in my subdivision will go to hell." In a neighborhood, or a nation, allowing the lowest, most racist denomenator to set the agenda is bad policy.

Giving a fig

Not food related, and I hesitate, what with Gumbo Tales to review, and achingly sincere Portland dining to recall, and further adventures in cooking with sidemeat (dice, sweat, cook w/ baby vidalias, serve over Daniel Boone grits w/ a poached egg, nothing wrong with that) to detail. But a couple of things caught my eye:

1) Classic lit as chick lit. I thought it was funny. A number of Jezebel commenters did not, at least the Anne Frank one. My colleague who's in the middle of teaching V thought it was funny.

2 ) Proper attire. Not sold. A few years back, some retarded wingnuts set up a "genocide exhibit" in the middle of my campus, which was bascially giant images of fetus porn shot in a way that made the pictures look uncannily like pictures on a Waffle House menu. The Cod a) thinks people should be sovereign over their own bodies b ) cannot tolerate bad readings (fetuses are not a race, thus, unlike, say Jews or Armenians, cannot be subject to a genocide). So as I walked by, I told them I was gonna break off  a check to Planned Parenthood as soon as I got back to my office. I did, and I've heard from them about three times a week ever since. ( The missives from "blogger" Emily X are my favorites!)

And now, they are selling these condoms, marketed to women, with some portion of the proceeds going to Planned  Parenthood. Nice. Except not really. A) Graphically speaking, the packaging itself may prevent conception -- it's that ugly. It's like Heironymous Bosch was temping in the Apple package design department. For the vast majority of women and men who do not purchase their contraceptives from lobby kiosks in W hotels, a different look might be better. B) The coy euphemism of the package -- a fig leaf! Just like the cover of the Bible! -- seems to suggest that in fact there is a stigma attached to women owning/carrying condoms, and they should be ashamed.

I'm no marketing expert, but something more like Vinnie's fine line of products for women seems like it might send that message better -- maybe Maggie Sanger's Pussy Gaskets:  'For when you want to have sex with a man but not have his babies or diseases.' (tm) Failing that, I'd opt for the Coney Island Whitefish brand over Proper Attire. Retro, a bit edgy, but classy. Maybe get Ben Katchor to do the logo. You're welcome, Planned Parenthood, and feel free to steal these ideas, which are better than yours.

And speaking of figs, I'm hoping this is the year the fig in the yard starts producing. This October, it's either from-scratch Newtons, or the loppers.

Ride Your Bike

A worthy petition crossed my desk:

We would like a 'Bike There' feature added to Google Maps - to go with the current 'Drive There' and 'Take Public Transit' options.
The feature would take into account actual bicycle lanes from the locality being mapped, and it would automatically plan a route for a bicyclist, possibly even providing the cyclist options for either the most direct route, or the most bicycle-friendly (safest) route. The Google Maps-based third party site, byCycle.org (http://byCycle.org/), provides these features for two metro areas - Portland, Oregon and Madison, Wisconsin, and there are countless other mapping initiatives around the world aimed at accomplishing the same goal. We hope that Google will consider building this feature into the core Google Maps service.

You do not have to be Peter Hoffman riding around town on his lowrider bicycle like some latter-day green Ben Franklin to see the utility here, but it  does raise a few  questions. The "safest" option  implies less  safe options, which suggests that there are routes, which while legal, are not safe. In real life, this is true, but institutionalizing the notion that it is incumbent upon cyclists to find routes where they are not, you know, interfering with real traffic, rather than for motorists to recognize that bikes exist. It is a different iteration of the problem I have with bike lanes, in that while they are universally ignored by motorists, they undermine the right of cyclists to ride on roads where there are not bike lanes.
Cyclists can disagree on the question of bike lanes, but not on the Flavor Channel:
The Flavor Channel_"Ride_Your_Bike" Plexicom, 1998

Barack Obama is not a Plagiarist

Here we go again. Plagiarism is an interest of mine, be it Marcel Vigneron, or oyster bars, or Mrs. Seinfeld.  As the race to be the Top Chef at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue heats up, out come the P-bombs. Here's what I wrote on the Facebooks at my day job:

Plagiarism is something I take seriously. I make it clear on the syllabus of every course that I teach, and I pursue the maximum penalty for every case that I identify. If I ran this university, the penalty for a clear case of plagiarism would be expulsion, with no chance ever for your name to appear on a on of our diplomas. This, and any other university, is about ideas, and stealing them is stealing the most precious thing about it, or any other university.

I was dismayed this morning to wake up to Hillary Clinton's  allegations of plagiarism against Barack Obama. It did not take long to establish that these claims were utterly specious. Hillary Clinton's assertion is based on evidence that Obama appropriated portions of speeches prepared by Deval Patrick, current governor of Massachusetts, who is also working for Obama's campaign.

Obama did use portions of speeches prepared by Patrick, but that is not plagiarism. Different kinds of writing and speech have different expectations built into them. Your name on an academic term paper, or scholarly essay is an assertion that the work is your own -- but it is the norm for politicians to employ speechwriters. To deliver a speech during a political campaign is no more a claim that you wrote it than to sing Rock Island Line is to claim that you wrote that song.

I have never been a Hillary-basher. I have spent many of the last eight years nostalgic for the Bill Clinton presidency. Obama's inexperience makes me nervous. I was pretty much on the fence with these two candidates -- valuing Clinton's experience, but concerned about her image, cherishing Barack's energy, but worried about his youth. But Hillary has lost my support forever.

While my guitar shaped like Thomas Paine gently weeps.

This post is a little late, and gets the dreaded Silica Gel label, but Stephen A. Smith's fulminations against bloggers represent some of the same stuff we've seen from Batali, et al in re food bloggers, cooked down to a rock you can smoke:

"And when you look at the internet business, what’s dangerous about it is that people who are clearly unqualified get to disseminate their piece to the masses. I respect the journalism industry, and the fact of the matter is ...someone with no training should not be allowed to have any kind of format whatsoever to disseminate to the masses to the level which they can. They are not trained."

Yes, it is alarming that Mr. Smith seems shaky on the meaning of the word "format," but more alarming that a putative journalist who reaches millions of homes every day seems to be operating with a guild mentality. Imagine how different (and better!) the history of our species would be if only people had been properly trained had access to mass media.  Milton's just an old blind pain in the ass, and Tom Paine's that guy at your local who bumps into you, spills your beer,  and spends the whole night apologizing to you. Woodward and Bernstein are bumping rails in an Alexandria motel, etcetera, etcetera. Hell, in Stephen A. Smith's world, Martin Luther would have had to be thesis-nailing certified before he posted his stuff up.

The point, which is evidently bears repeating, is that access to the medium does not create an audience. An easy way to establish that is to click on the "next blog" link on a Blogspot blog. For every blog that people read, there are hundreds that are ignored by a number that asymptotically approaches everyone. A blog only has an audience if people find it and read it. There are ways to generate that audience, but they involve, primarily, having content that people want to read. If you are credible, you are credible, if you ain't, you ain't, and it does not matter what the medium is. Like Marshall McLuhan said, don't hate the player, hate the game.

And speaking of the title, in case you missed it, it's the 1988 NBA Eastern Finals, and Prince is Dominique Wilkins, and Larry Bird:

Away from my desk

I'll be roasting a pig in the Rockaways this weekend. Where ever you are, remember that it is a Friday in late July, so don't let your office door hit you in the ass on the way to the beach:

WF CEO LJ? WTF!?*

A little bit out of scope, but in case you missed it, the CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey, whom you may remember as Michael Pollan's opponent in last summer's iteration of Tyson v. Secretariat, is in a bit of hot water because of those darn internets. I'd agree with Mark Cuban, who told the WSJ that "It's a huge mistake for a CEO of a public company to post under an undisclosed handle." The WSJ piece was headlined "Executives get the Blogging Bug," and the title points to a subtler aspect of this business -- pretty much everything on the Internet that is not email, cats, or pornography gets called a blog -- it's hard for me to see how a series of press releases from a corporation or its CEO qualify as a blog in any useful sense of the word. Posting about your own company or a rival's anonymously on a message board is a different issue entirely. On the WF blog, Mackey speaks, as it were, ex cathedra, as "Harodeb" on a stock discussion board, he gets into territory that seems pretty sketch.

*The Chief Executive Officer of Whole Foods has a Livejournal? What the fuck?

Two things

Still reeling from a week of living off the land, trying to forage sustenance from the fine dining establishments of Hanover, NH. But two non-food items while I get my sea legs back:
1) Someone should totally make a lowrider Prius. The ghastly quiet would be so good.
2) Feelies and LCD Soundsystem -- twins, born 20 years apart, and fed different drugs?