I haven't seen that many d0nuts on a single comment since the election was over. My comment. Because I dared correct a poster. What's most troubling is the thought processes behind this.
I'm not pissing and moaning because I got HR'd or that I once again can't give out the occasional d0nut. I'm disturbed because, as we learned from Walt Kelly's Pogo, we have met the enemy and he is us. Kossacks are demonstrably no better than the freepers. Dissent is not tolerated. As Jello Biafra says in his live show openings, "See how quickly they fall into line!"
The important bit is in the last paragraph -- you can skip everything after the first paragraph in the body
I do not agree with what you have to say,
but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.
<right>-- Voltaire</right>
I reload this site at least a dozen times a day to keep up with what's going on in American politics since they affect me here in Soviet Europe and since I still retain my right to vote in the US. It's better than C&L, TPM and the rest of them because there are some people who are seriously dedicated to providing a metric fuckton of information, from KagroX to Nate to BarbinMD. There's enough serious shit on this site each day to rival the seriousness and integrity of the weekly Nation plus whatever serious articles Rolling Stone, Salon and Vanity Fair are running this week. In-depth analysis rocks my socks and gives me something to do while I'm waiting for another software installation to build or complete.
I also love most of the non-political diaries here, from the disaster liveblogging which actually helps people in immediate danger to the Cheers & Jeers that Kos himself only begrudgingly came around to admire, to the utter display of self-destruction by someone in a manic paranoid state. That last bit may sound really callous but you have to understand that the love of my life and mother of my child works in health care, dealing with the doctors who themselves deal with the superfreaks and crazoids. Gallows humour is the norm here because you either make fun of the insanity or you implode inside a year. Humour is the great normaliser.
Then there's my nick. I'm not "SuperFriendlyDog" or "ExtraHappyPuppy". I'm ReallyEvilCanine. I write a blog which is not unknown among IT people. I am a misanthrope and find nothing wrong with this. What may surprise you is that I also work in the gastro business. I am about to open a restaurant; I already work part-time at a friend's place as front of house and in the kitchen. I can be friendly and fake sincerity and niceness. The reason I can do this is because I know my shit.
I was first sent to cooking school at the tender age of 13 in the 1970s when Escoffier was all anyone learned. Heavy sauces, fat buffets, crappy & kitschy dining rooms and snotty workers. The kitchen was hell on earth. Don't take my word for it; read Anothony Bourdain's book which sums everything up quite nicely. It was hell. It was shit. But goddamn did I learn to make sauces and chop shallots so fine they come out almost a paste.
I'm not tooting my horn here. The Earth is round. The Sun is hot. I can cook professionally and have done so over the years, even when on vacation.
This past Christmas I cooked dinner for my new extended family in Liverpool. At the last minute we had two extra guests. No problem. I cooked for seven instead of five and didn't blink. The previous year with my previous girlfriend (who I wasn't going to marry or impregnate) I cooked for 20. Again, no big deal. Cooking at home and cooking professionally are very different things.
I can't cook like most people do; I cook as if I'm in a restaurant. The number of people has nothing to do with how long it's going to take me to prep everything; it's just an indication of how much shit I have to have on hand. If last Xmas had been 15 people I would've prepped a second goose, bought more cranberries and spud, etc. Tripling the number of people wouldn't have added even half an hour to the prep.
When I see a diary about food I go into chef mode. I can't help myself. When I see wrongness I can't stop myself trying to correct it. So sue me. Cooking good food is important to me. If I was Japanese I would've jumped off the highest building in Munich for the atrocity I provided my pregnant woman tonight; she loved it and reminded me what craptastical mouth stuff she grew up with. I am still ashamed.
I'm truly thrilled that there are foodies everywhere and muliple fucking cable TV networks dedicated to food. People are finally eating good shit and not the crap that was so pervasive from WWII into the 1980s: carveries, buffets, garish decoration and slop on a plate. I don't hate Ramsay or even Oliver (though he does annoy). Hell, even Delia is better than what we had before Julia Child and Graham Kerr came along to show people that cooking didn't have to be hard or complicated or painful.
I also did time at uni in the Linguistics department and worked at three different newspapers as the copy editor. I'm a bit of a pedant. Do you see the problem yet?
I am a professional; I know my sauces. A roux is the most basic thickener on the planet: equal volumes of fat and flour. In the diary I read was a claim that roux was a "liaison". Perhaps in non-cooking parlance, but "liaison" in a professional kitchen is nothing but some fucking egg yolks and cream, not just anything that might bind and thicken.
I pointed this out in a comment which has completely disappeared, along with an explanation of roux, a list of sauces based on roux and some further sauces based on those second-tier sauces. Because, you know, I do this professionally. I have stood in a fucking 45°C kitchen for six hours chopping shallots on demand and making sauces for more than 100 plate and not said anything beyond telling my colleagues that their mothers are whores (to which at least one would responded that his ma learned the trade from mine).
The whole point of this unwanted autohagiography isn't to tell you that I'm Teh Bestest Cooking Guy EVAR11!1shiftone. It's this: the person who dared correct someone who was very wrong about sauces and cooking and who probably violated copyright laws by posting cookbook recipes was HR'd out of existence. For posting correctness.
Laughing at smart people for being smart? I thought that's what their side did. I didn't realise that "my side" was another pile of fucking hypocrites who did it too. In light of the administration's actions I also stand by my claim from last year that we only voted for the douche bag over the turd.
Go on and HR this one out of existence, too. I don't care anymore.