This Week In Vexillology #57

This Week In Vexillology, we're sticking with a red and yellow theme by heading east out to the steppes and the Republic of Kyrgyzstan!

Adopted on March 3rd, 1992 for national and civil usage this flag is the first post-communist flag of Kyrgyzstan.  Not sure what exactly the delay was- as they had declared independence the year before in 1991 but it was one of the last Soviet republics to declare independence so maybe they just weren't ready to leave yet.

The red in the flag is for Manas The Noble, the national hero of Kyrgyzstan.  (Wikipedia has the 4-1-1 on him over here if you're interested.)  The forty rays of the sun stand for the forty tribes of the Kyrgyz nation, while in the center of the sun is a stylized yurt, the traditional home of nomadic people.  (If you want to know more about yurts or are potentially interested in buying your very own, I'd check out Pacific Yurts.)

While the flag is red and yellow, the Arms of Kyrgyzstan have an entirely different look:

Like Kazakhstan, the coat of arms does not have a shield but instead is more of a round emblem than anything else.  In the center is a white eagle with spread wings.  Behind this are the snow capped mountains of the Tien Shan and a radiant rising sun.   It's bordered by cotton and wheat, the major agricultural products of Kyrgyzstan while the name of the state, Kyrgyz Republic is in Cyrillic on the outside of the shield.

Either way, both flag and emblem are excellent.   So put your hands together and give it up for Kyrgyzstan!   And remember, until next time, keep your flags flying- FREAK or otherwise.

Food Adventures #34: Cider and Bourbon Braised Bacon

I should have gone to the meat locker.

(Rewinding a bit:  the brother-in-law found this awesome blog and as I was perusing it, I found this recipe.  A monthlong quest for the unsliced bacon (either belly or jowl) that the recipe called for ensued.)

It's not that I wasn't happy with what we ended up with.  As promised, the stuff melted in your mouth but the flavors, if they were there were way too subtle for me to notice.   It tasted great, but where was the cider?  Where was the bourbon?  Where was the intense bacon flavor?  It was then that I realized my mistake:  instead of regular, delicious, amazing looking pork belly:

I should have found some that was already cured.   As in actual, unsliced bacon.  Everyone keeps telling me that Bud's Meat Locker in Riverside is the place to go and next time, that's going to be my first stop.  But let's consider how promising this recipe looked after it was done cooking:

Doesn't that look amazing?  Doesn't that look like a glorious melding of cider, bourbon and bacon?  I think it does!  I don't get where things went awry.  Where did all the damn flavor go?  This is what we ended up with:

(If you were curious...  on the left we have latkes, because it's Hanukkah and quince and on the right, we find our bacon, post braising, after it was seared.)  The original recipe called for it to be served on beet chips with pureed parsnips and arugula but after consultation with Mother Cigar, we decided on going with a simple crostini with a white bean paste instead.  It worked great!  But overall, this recipe was a little confounding.  Texture wise, it delivered what it advertised, melt in the mouth goodness.  But flavor-wise, the 'intense bacon flavor' that the recipe described was somewhat lacking and I'm not entirely sure why. 

This one, I might have to take another run at.

'The Day of the Doctor' --A Review

I'll try and be as spoiler-free as possible, but if you have not seen Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary Special, The Day of the Doctor, stop reading...  now.

The thing about Doctor Who, at least in its contemporary form is that, to me anyway, it's always been a little uneven.  There are brilliant episodes that I would happily watch again and again and again but then there are sort of middling episodes which I don't really care about all that much.   It gets irritating after awhile because when you see what this show is capable of, you wonder why it can't be as consistently good as it should be. 

Needles to say, I approached the 50th Anniversary Special with a certain amount of trepidation because of that.   Would Moffat and Company bring their A-Game?  Could they possible do five decades of this show justice?  (And more to the point, do a better job than Star Trek's pale, lens flared disappointment of a Wrath of Khan re-make?)  Having watched the special I can unequivocally say that they delivered...   and then some.

Let's see...  how to proceed without spoiling absolutely everything?  It's going to be tough, so bear with me:  basically, there was a hidden Doctor, thanks to the mysterious Sister of Karn, who helped out Doctor #8, Paul McGann in this beautiful and exciting mini-sode that ties classic Who in with the New Who of today.  The Hidden Doctor (or War Doctor, played by John Hurt) is the Doctor that fought in the Time War.  At the height of the Time War (seen for what I think is the first time in the 50 year run of the series), when the Daleks were besieging Gallifrey and threatening the second city of the Time Lords, Arcadia, he makes a terrible decision, stealing a weapon that could wipe out both Daleks and Time Lords and end the war once and for all.

Only it turns out, the weapon, called The Moment has a conscious (which takes an interesting and very familiar form) and takes him to meet two of his older counterparts (Doctors 10 and 11) so he can see what the choice will do to him and finally, the often referred to but never seen adventures with Queen Elizabeth I take place.  There's shout-outs a plenty to Classic Who, with the Brigadier's Daughter making an appearance along with U.N.I.T at the Tower of London and a classic Who monster, the Zygons also show up. 

In the end, the War Doctor has to make his choice and this time, he doesn't do so alone.  10 and 11 are with him and in the end he makes a choice that turns out to be a complete game changer for Doctor Who.  (I won't spoil it for you, but it opens up acres of new territory for the show and raises all kinds of interesting possibilities for the future.) 

But does it all work?  It does.   There was every potential for disaster but they tied it all together beautifully.   This was brilliant.  A perfect tribute to one of the progenitors of science fiction television and it did something that Who has done nearly a dozen times over the years:  it regenerated.

I know some fans were grousing about the lack of prior Doctors and it would have been brilliant to see all the modern Doctors together in one special, but I think that if the story would have demanded it, they would have been there and in the end, we saw them all together, after a fashion.  Between the appearance of Paul McGann in the prequel and a certain special appearance at the end of the episode, I think that there were enough shout outs to fans of the show that worked to make the 50th Anniversary a special one.  Overall:  A fitting tribute to five decades of Doctor Who and a brilliant recharge of the show for the years ahead.   Can't wait until the Christmas special.

14: Vikings/Packers at Lambeau. 'Nuff Said.

If you're going to drive all the way to Green Bay to watch a Packers game, it's really only worth the trip if you go for the Vikings-Packers game and do so in November.  I wouldn't have agreed with this statement this past Sunday after spending around five hours or so watching what was the coldest game at Lambeau Stadium in nearly 37 years.

But the more I thought about it, the more the notion made sense to me:  it's Green Bay.  The Frozen Tundra.  One of the Shrines of Professional Football.  If you're a sports fan, there are some stadiums you just have to go to, period.   I don't like baseball all that much but if someone offered me tickets to Fenway or Wrigley, I'd go- because, that's what you do.  You have to go those stadiums that have a sense of history and tradition, stadiums that have a sense of character about them because in this age of obscenely large playgrounds of corporate sterility and monuments to the monstrous egos of billionaires, there really aren't that many of them left.

So, we went.   The Missus got to fulfill a long time dream of hers to see the Minnesota Vikings play.  Uncle Train Driver got to celebrate his 50th Birthday in style.  The rest of risked frostbite and damn near froze to death but it was still a great time.

First impressions:  these people know how to build a stadium.  A traditional bowl layout, Lambeau is gifted with a relative high rim which goes along way to keeping the wind out.  (Get out of your seats and walk to the concourse, however, all you get is wind.) The resulting feeling though, was intimate and really, it felt more like a college stadium than a big, flashy pro facility- which I liked a lot.

Tempting, but resist if you can:  by the third quarter, the Missus and I were hungry and cold, so we wanted to get up and move around to get some blood flowing.  We ran to the bathrooms, which were heated.  The thing is, your immediate reaction is one of total relief.  Finally, you think, somewhere warm, but when you go back outside, it's like jumping back into a swimming pool after sitting in a hot tub for ten minutes.  Not a good idea.

As for the game itself, it was surprisingly good.  Minnesota's defense came to play and poor Scott Tolzein couldn't get anything going in the first half for the Packers.  As a result, Minnesota had a hefty lead going into the fourth quarter, which slowly but surely evaporated as Matt Flynn took over for Tolzein and eventually forced the game into overtime.

I was pissed.  At that point I was cold and was almost, almost to the point where I didn't care who won as long as somebody hurried up and did so.  An extra quarter of football later and my belief that pro football's version overtime is vastly inferior to college football's overtime rules was confirmed, because the game ended in a tie.

Something I didn't know:  Green Bay plays this song after every touchdown, a tradition that started way back in 1985.  It works for them.  I actually kind of liked it...   and as obnoxious as the constant "And that's another Packers...  (crowd yells together) FIRST DOWN!" got, that worked for them as well.

It was one hell of an experience and I'm glad I went.   I don't know if I'd want to go again in November though.

This Week In Vexillology #56

Last week we were in Tanzania looking at one of my favorite African flags but this week, we're heading back up to look at one of Europe's most controversial flags and probably the only flag I can think of that's been subject of an intellectual property controversy and economic blockade.   Yes, it's the Republic of Macedonia!

The current flag was adopted on October 5th, 1995 for national and civil usage.  The red and yellow in the flag are taken from the traditional coat of arms of Macedonia- the symbol from the coat of arms is the Golden Lion and dates from around 1340 or so.  The colors from the coat of arms have remained the colors of Macedonia ever since.   The radiant sun in the center of the flag was added in 1995 to replace the controversial 'Star of Vergina.'

But this wasn't Macedonia's first flag following independence from Yugoslavia- this was:

This is in the infamous Vergina Flag and it caused quite a stir.  The Vergina Sun or Star of Vergina is an ancient Macedonian emblem from the tomb of Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great.   Greece flipped its shit about this:  they claimed it as a Greek emblem and went so far as to file a claim with the World Intellectual Property Organization for exclusive copyright over the symbol.  They prevented the new flag from being flown at the United Nations HQ in New York and as the icing on the cake, imposed a one year economic blockade until the Macedonians finally folded and changed their flag.

While I think both flags are striking- there's something to be said for the Vergina Flag.  It speaks to ancient history of the region and looks pretty boss- but never fear, the replacement and current flag gets plenty of plaudits as well-  the 2002 Editors of the World Almanac picked the best flags of all the states in the world and Macedonia came in second, between Bhutan (1st) and Kiribati (3rd,)   A silver medal isn't half bad, I don't think.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen put your hands together for Macedonia!  And until next time, keep your flags flying-  FREAK or otherwise.

50 Years Later

I think I'm too young to care about JFK.  I haven't done a comprehensive survey of people my age to see if a similar lack of feeling affects my generation, but it wouldn't surprise me.   It's annoying how people tend to look at that era with rose-colored glasses, because, honestly, most of the mystique stems from the fact that a young, telegenic President was assassinated. 

All right, maybe that's a little too harsh.  Yes, the Bay of Pigs was a total fiasco, but he sort of inherited that from Eisenhower.   Maybe a lot of the Cuban Missile Crisis was down to sheer luck- but I'm glad he managed to get us through it without, you know, destroying the world.  The Moon Speech was brilliant.   The whole 'I am a jelly donut' thing was also brilliant- despite the fact it obscures one of the great political speeches of the 20th Century in my opinion.  He started the ball rolling on civil rights- though his untimely death meant he didn't see it through.

Fine, fine.  Maybe I shouldn't be so cynical and jaded about him.  But part of the reason I just can't get on board with liberalism in this country is the large population of Boomers that seem to want to drag us kick and screaming back to the 60s, so they can start the past five decades over again and 'do it right this time.'  The decade is so idealized by some people, it's nauseating- I mean, was it really all that great?  Was it about America 'coming of age' or 'losing its innocence.'   For all that liberals bitch about conservatives wanting to drag us back to the 50s (part of the reason why I can't get on board with conservatism), there's a large swathe of nostalgia on the left that yearns for the good old days of the 60s, when people didn't trust anybody over 30 and banded together to fight 'the man.'   Causes were just.  The government fought for the people and not the corporations and blah, blah, blah...

It's like those bumper stickers you see sometimes:  'THE WEEKEND:  Brought to you by LABOR UNIONS.'  And while that's true and I appreciate it greatly, that's not enough for me to sign a union card.  I want to know what you're going to do tomorrow, not what tired old ideology and rusty, sclerotic organization you'd like me to support yesterday.

But that's just me.  I'm picky like that I guess.

Do I think there was a lone gunman on the grassy knoll?  No, I don't.  I actually read a really excellent book on the Kennedy Assassination whose name escapes me at the moment and the author seemed level headed and convincing enough that I sort of brought into his argument that yes, Oswald acted alone and yes, the Castro probably knew and said nothing.  Because, after all, if someone has been trying to kill you in the most ridiculous way possible, why would you want to speak up?

The theories about the Mob are interesting though- especially given what happened to Oswald a week later at the hands of Jack Ruby.

What would be interesting to find out though, is just how the general public has reacted to the assassination of Presidents in the past.   Was McKinley held in higher esteem because of his death?  What about Garfield?  (Obviously, Lincoln was.  When you die and someone says:  "Now, he belongs to the ages."  That's the kind of thing that gets engraved in history book, permanently.)

So for those that have sad memories of this day, so long ago, I wish them comfort today.   As for myself, I will go to work and be blessedly free of nostalgia about today and probably remain slightly jaded and cynical about the whole thing.

BOOM!

For the first time in a long time, CNN is obsessed over something other than the ongoing trainwreck of the ObamaCare website.  Today, Senate Democrats, who apparently can't see the big picture much beyond the tip of their own noises invoked the so-called nuclear option, ending filibusters for the majority of presidential nominations.

My position on the Filibuster issue has not changed.   If people want to filibuster, that's fine but they should bring back the old school rules and Mr. Smith Goes To Washington that shit.  The average age of a US Senator seems to be around 300 or so and that, to me, would be a far more effective way of stopping filibusters.  No sitting US Senator is going to stand for anywhere 6-24 hours just talking about how much a judicial nominee sucks out loud.   I'm surprised that Rand Paul managed it for as long as he did- and although Ted Cruz's little gab-a-thon lacked the political acumen, sense of principle and spontaneity of Senator Paul's, I'm surprised he managed it as well.

That said, maybe this will turn out all right in the end.  After all, when Democrats were in the minority we had to hear years of whining by Republicans about obstructionist Democrats and how all the President's nominees should be granted an up or down vote, blah, blah, blah, etc, etc, etc.   Now that the Democrats have lowered the boom, well, then, at least we won't be hearing this complaint again.  Right? Riiiiiiiiiiight?  

There's a coherent argument to be made that maybe playing silly-ass games with judicial nominees isn't the best idea in the world and maybe, just maybe, the Senate could be doing more productive things with its time.  That said, this seems like a stupendously idiotic political move on the part of Senate Democrats.   Elections happen on a somewhat regular basis and given the increasingly irritable mood of the electorate right now, it wouldn't take much to find the shoe on the other foot pretty quickly.  (A fact that Senate Republicans were quick to point out.   Senator Grassley went even further and said that if GOPers regain control of the Senate, they'd seek to have Supreme Court nominees included in this- because, why not?  If the Dems are going to crack open the door, then the GOPers might as well just push it the rest of the way open.)

But, it's done.  Dems can breathe a sigh of relief, pretend they're doing something about partisan gridlock and stop talking about the ongoing trainwreck that is Healthcare.gov for a minute or two. 

Here's the kicker though:  if the GOPers do take control of the Senate next year then I don't want to hear one goddamn word from the Democrats about this.   These rules are, after all, what they wanted.

Food Adventures #33: Shaq Soda

This exists.

When I first heard about this, I was intrigued.  After all, seven different flavors of cream soda, all with the Shaq's smiling face on them?  The potential for 'trainwreck' seemed to run quite high, to be totally honest.  I mean...  Shaq.   Soda.   That's not a combination that immediately springs to mind when you think of Mr. O'Neal.   All right, yes, I suppose if the man can make Blue Chips and Kazaam, he can probably do whatever he damn well pleases but soda?   The mind boggles.

There have been three cases of this stuff sitting, just waiting to be unleashed on the world at the Kum and Go on Burlington/Madison for at least a month now.  This past Sunday, I stopped in, just to see if they had been finally, at long last, placed upon the shelves and to my amazement...  they had.

So, I snagged a couple of cans.  First thing that I noticed was the price.  99 cents isn't bad for a can of pop but when you take into account that Shaq is marketing these things through Arizona- a single can means 23.5 fluid ounces, it actually ends up being a pretty good deal.  For my tasting, I went with orange cream and strawberry cream.  There was also the option for blueberry cream but really, I've never been that big of a fan of blueberries so I skipped that one.  I got to work, sat down and decided to play it safe and cracked the orange cream soda first.

The smell was promising.  You could smell both cream and orange which is always a good sign and the taste was actually not half bad.   I think there's a potential, especially with fruit based sodas to overdo it on the corn syrup so that you, the drinker, ends up trying to get the taste of sweet syrup off of your lips and end up almost slipping into a diabetic coma of some kind.  No worries though:  Shaq Soda delivers flavor.  It is, the can informs me 'A Big Can For The Big Man' though the claim for it being 'ALL NATURAL' makes me laugh a bit though.

The Strawberry Cream soda was an equally pleasant experience.   I'm not usually a fan of fruit flavored sodas to begin with.   They've always struck me as being too sweet, the flavors outsized as if the makers want to make sure that the drinker really knows that they're drinking strawberry or orange flavored soda.  While I'm a little curious as to how cream soda can be 'all natural, no artificial flavors and no artificial color' I suspect that the subtle, more pleasant flavoring could be a result of that.

At 90 calories a serving (for around 270 calories a can) these cans don't seem too out of line calorie wise either.   Obviously, if you're serious about watching your calories you should probably skip these and stick to water instead.  But that's the other nice thing about these things:  I didn't feel like I was drowning in saccharine like I usually do when I drink regular pop. 

Overall:  This might be the greatest thing Shaq has done since Kazaam.  Or possibly playing with Kobe.  Far from a trainwreck, this is an odd, quirky concept that actually works really, really well.

This Week In Vexillology #55

Last week, we looked at Jamaica with it's lush green mountains, good coffee and reggae beats.  This week in vexillology, we're heading back to Africa and the snows of Kilimanjaro with one of my favorite African flags, Tanzania:

Adopted on June 30th, 1964 for national and civil usage, the flag of Tanzania is actually a unified flag of the old British Colony of Tanganyika and the Republic of Zanzibar, which is a group of islands just off of the coast.  Together they formed the new Republic of Tanzania.  How, you ask?  Well, something like this.  This was the original flag of Tanganyika:

And this was the original flag of the Republic of Zanzibar (the colors in this flag were taken from the Afro-Shirazi Party which overthrew the ruling Sultan in 1964.)   Fun bonus fact about Zanzibar:  Freddie Mercury was born there.

Together, the two countries combined to make the flag you see above.  The green and black were taken from the old Tanganyikan flag- which represents the lands and the people.   The yellow on either side of the black stripe in the middle represents mineral wealth, while the blue was taken from the old flag of Zanzibar and represents the sea.

All in all, I just really like this flag.  The colors (although in my handy dandy reference guide, the blue is a lot darker than it appears here) are great and the design very clean-  plus, there's nostalgia for my halcyon Swahili days as an undergraduate- though I wish I would have absorbed more of the language that I did.   One fine day, I read on the news (as you do) that it was Tanzanian Independence Day and suggested to my teacher that she (being from Tanzania) should give us the day off to celebrate.   And to my surprise (and the delight of the rest of the class) she thought about it, shrugged and said 'ok.'

(You begin to see why I didn't absorb much Swahili beyond a hearty HUJAMBO! right?  Well, and I hate to say it- because we did actually learn- it's just that, well, the learning was somewhat relaxed and unusual in its nature- but a rumor had run around campus that Swahili was one of the easiest languages to learn so joining me in my Swahili class were a veritable forest of football players- including current Iowa O-Line Coach Brian Ferentz and current Vikings Player Chad Greenway.  Just one of the many small strange things that make my life seem very bizarre sometimes.)

So, kids, put your hands together and give it up for Tanzania!  And remember, until next time keep your flags flying- FREAK or otherwise!

Thirty Days Of Thanks, Part One

I'm not usually one for Facebook status trends or chain letter type things that seem to flood social media now and again, but I like the 'Thirty Days of Thanks' thing.  I noticed it last year, did it and decided to do it again this year.  This is the first half:

1.  I'm thankful for my job.  It can be by turns, stressful, rage-inducing, tiresome, irritating, challenging and rewarding- sometimes all within one shift or even all at the same time.  It teaches me to be kind and patient with people I'd rather smack upside the head.  It's taught me the value of a 'mute' button.  I thought long ago that this would be an interesting job to have and lo and behold I was right.

2.  I'm thankful for my wife.  I have no idea what I did to get this lucky, but I found a beautiful, intelligent woman that accepts me for all my weirdness and quirks, is never afraid to tell me when I'm full of shit and keeps my feet firmly on the ground- where they belong.  Six years ago, I was in a bar in Mankato watching as Romo fumbled the snap against the Seahawks in the playoffs when this beautiful woman came in and flashed me a smile that just lit up the room.   Six years later, she's still smiling so I must be doing something right.

3. I'm thankful for friends near and far. Some friends wander in and out of your life while some stick around and even though time and distance may separate us, I'm grateful for all of them because they've all impacted my life in some small way- and I hope they can say the same about me.

4.  I'm thankful for Little Man. He came into our lives like a whirlwind of joy and it's been a blast ever since. There have been more good days than bad and when he's happy, smiling and laughing those days are the best days and I can't wait for all the adventures to come.

5.  I am thankful for those random days where everyone sleeps in until 9:30 and for living in a democracy.  Politics in this country may be frustrating, rage-inducing and nauseating pretty much most of the time but nothing beats waking up after a full 8 hours of sleep, having breakfast and then going to vote.  So go vote!  Not everybody gets too.

6.  I am thankful for mornings where Austin gets a kick out of watching Arcade Fire videos on YouTube and afternoons where he at least pretends to be taking a nap.  He could be pulling a full Keith Richards on his room right now, but all I hear is deafening, innocent silence.

7.  Oddly enough, I'm thankful for our menagerie of furry creatures.   They're a motley crew, each with their own personality and they can be a real pain in the ass sometimes, but Samson comes and checks on Ali and I every night before bed.  Harper snuggles better than any cat I've ever had.  Moxie is our ginger puddle of fur.  Sophie is just the best, low maintenance dog ever.  And despite Winston's tendency to eat things he can't really digest and thus cost us dinero, I wouldn't sleep right without him snoring at the end of the bed.

8-9.  (Combo because I wanted to get to bed last night.)  I'm thankful for a warm, comfortable bed to sleep in and late night mugs of cocoa to accompany me with my editing AND early morning cups of tea with a squirt of agave nectar to help my throat to get me going.

10.  Weirdly, I'm thankful for the NBC Sports Network. Ever since my parents took us all to a World Cup Qualifier in 1994, I've always loved everything about soccer- but watching it was either a 'once every four years' type of thing or luck of the draw with random MLS games or free weeks of the Fox Soccer Channel. The geniuses at NBC Sports nabbed every Premier League game and are doing a beautiful job broadcasting them... and for the first time ever, I really feel like I'm a fan and not just some weirdo checking the league tables on the BBC site.

11.  I'm thankful for perseverance. I had a mild panic attack at the state of my slowly-but-surely coming together book today. I really want to unleash this thing on the world before the end of the month but there's a daunting amount of work to do. The cover still needs made. I still need to figure out my way around CreateSpace and Scrivener to git er done and when I was about at that brown paper bag stage, I looked at the calendar, did some calculation in my head and said to myself: 'No, I GOT THIS.'

12.  As we head deeper into colder weather, I'm breaking into the small vault of tea from Teavana I've been hoarding, Doomsday Prepper style.  When I'm all stuffy and my throat is sore, there's nothing like a cuppa with a squirt of agave nectar to wake me up and soothe my throat.

13.  I'm thankful for socks without holes in them, because thanks to Winston who seems to be convinced that if he just eats ONE MORE he can get to the peanut butter/meat paste flavored center there aren't that many around the house.

14.  I'm thankful for those moments (at work or otherwise) where suddenly, you're trying to juggle six things at once and there's that exciting moment when you're not entirely sure whether they're going to be chainsaws or bananas.  It adds a certain zest to life.

15.  I'm thankful for those random days where Austin wakes up and entertains himself for a solid hour and a half before demanding freedom (and breakfast.)  Days like these probably aren't going to be guaranteed so I enjoy them when they happen.

Albums2010 #66: Comfort Eagle

The main genesis for listening to this entire album came from the sudden appearance of all five seasons of Chuck on Netflix a couple of days ago.   Well it might have been longer than a couple of days ago, but I just noticed it a couple of days ago- oh, and if you're wondering why the writing on this blog has been a little flat and a little 'meh' of late, I put it down to trying to get my first ever novel turned loose on the world as well as the inexplicable lack of Cake in my life.

Well, one of those things has been rectified and by month's end I'm hoping to rectify the other.  (I'm getting closer.  Edits are almost done, then I've got to lock a cover and then make sure the damn thing is formatted correctly before I upload it and (gulp) set it free!)

But, in the meantime, let us to business:  CAKE.

The great thing about listening to this album was discovering songs that I knew (and liked) but did not, in fact, realize were songs of Cake's.  Prior to actually giving this album a listen, my experience consisted of 'Short Skirt/Long Jacket' and not much else.  However:  'Shadow Stabbing' was featured on the soundtrack to Orange County (this movie, which is actually really good and way underrated and has an excellent soundtrack, come to that.) And I know I've heard 'Love You Madly' somewhere before as well.   (Though where, is still something of a mystery to me.)

The band is described as being 'alternative rock.'  I think that definition fits them quite nicely.  The shifts in the overall sound of the band are subtle, but they're there:  shades of psychedlia on 'Comfort Eagle', layers of horns that bring to mind ska on 'Short Skirt/Long Jacket' and straight up alt rock on songs like 'Shadow Stabbing' with more quirky lyrics of pop rock on tracks like 'Opera Singer' and 'Meanwhile, Rick James...'  I enjoy the subtlety and the quirkiness of Cake.  They're not super loud, they're not super soft, they're sort of the porridge that's just right for Goldilocks:  relaxed, quirky and altogether excellent.

All in all, I really liked what I heard.  It was the perfect album to put on my Spotify and cook some lunch too and the groovy awesomeness of 'Short Skirt/Long Jacket' was far from a fluke.  This Cake tasted delicious and yes please, I'll have another.   Overall:  I'd peg this at a solid *** out of ****.  Its not 'knock your socks off' good, but it's really good.   And if you're in the mood for some laid back, groovy music then you'll go back for another slice.

Random Tangent: The video for Short Skirt/Long Jacket is brilliant.  I've always thought, randomly that if there ever was a serious female candidate for the Presidency and I was their hypothetical campaign manager I would pay serious bank to permission to use this song- because I really think it would be the perfect finger in the eye of popular expectations for female politicians/candidates in this country.  A serious contender for the Presidency wouldn't be afraid to break some of the 'rules' for women in politics and that song would be a perfect middle finger to demonstrate that.   But hey, that's just the way my mind works, I guess.

Whiskey of the Month #14: Buffalo Trace Bourbon

After our two month detour to Grappa, we're back to whiskey this month with another bourbon- this time from Buffalo Trace Distillery.  Buffalo Trace has quite the history:

The company claims the distillery is the oldest continuously-operating distillery in the United States.  Located on what the company claims was once an ancient buffalo crossing on the banks of the Kentucky River in Franklin County, the distillery is named after the American bison.

200 years is quite the legacy and happily, Buffalo Trace lives up to the hype.  While Jesse James was a good, basic, run of the mill bourbon and Maker's Mark was a little underwhelming (heresy to some bourbon fans, I know, but to me, for the price I paid it was underwhelming) Buffalo Trace knocks it out of the park.  Until I find a better bourbon, this one has set the gold standard by which I'll judge all future bourbons: seriously good shit.

I've got a delicious 15 year old scotch on deck for next month but after that, I'm wide open.  I think some research is in order because outside of getting ahold of Iowa's first single malt (courtesy of nearby Cedar Ridge) I've got nothing planned and if there's more bourbon out there as good as this then I'm going to find it.  (And maybe expand my rye palate as well.  So far the only rye I think I've tried is Templeton.   I need to change that.)

Color: dark honey, gold

Body: hints of toffee and caramel, maybe just a hint of candied fruit or raisins underneath.

Palate:  the viscosity is just about perfect with this one- it's not weak or watery but it's not too heavy or syrupy either.

Finish: There's a nice moment before the burn hits the back of your throat- this is strong stuff, after all, but once it goes down, there's a nice warming that fills you right up.  Good stuff.

Overall:  I would rate this better than Maker's Mark or Jesse James-- of the bourbon's I've tried, this was probably the best so far and it's not obscenely expensive to boot.

Adventures in Plumbing, Part 2

Both of our toilets are nearly fifty years old.

Normally, that would explain a lot.  After all, we've been having trouble with these toilets for awhile now and our attempt to get new guts for one of them was not met with success.   So, we had been looking around for new toilets.  But the enterprising Missus started doing research last night and we discovered something amazing.  This toilet:

(Yes, this toilet.)  Is going for upward of $500 on eBay.  Lids to these toilets are going for around $200.  For some weird reason, we seemed to have been sitting on solid vintage toilets of some kind and here's the mystery of it all:  I can't for the life of me figure out why.

Our toilets are Eljer toilets.   Eljer is a company that's still around today from what I can tell and I haven't been able to find any super-secret menus/news that their toilets are prized collectors items suddenly.  There's not a whole heck of a lot to really endear you to these toilets.   Their parts are so old that they're out of date and thus can't be fixed with parts from your local Menard's, Lowe's, etc.    And they use a hefty amount of water:  since The Cigarillo has discovered the Big Potty, our water bill has taken a large jump upward as you might expect, given his insistence on getting off the potty, checking the potty to see what the turd and/or pee he deposited there might look like, and then flushing them one at a time.

If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that these toilets are popular because they predate people giving a shit about things like water consumption and energy efficiency and like the people that stocked up on incandescent lightbulbs before they went the way of the dinosaur, I'm sure there are people that prefer old fashioned, water wasting toilets instead of the new fangled energy efficient, low flush things of today.   Or maybe it's just something about Eljer toilets.  Damned if I know...  to me, a shitter is a shitter but what do I know?

Today though, we went out to Lowe's, settled on the bold lock of Kohler (an Elliston, for those eccentrics reading this that really dig their shitters) and it gets installed on Thursday.   Given how old our toilets are, I'm sort of nervous about what surprises might lurk beneath these vintage bad boys.  But once they have it out we are going to take out to the Salvage Barn to see if anyone wants to take a crack at restoring this bad boy.

The adventures...  continue.

A Modest Proposal: The Post Office

Well, apparently Iowa City doesn't want the Post Office to leave downtown-  Mother Cigar raised a good point at lunch today:  all the rich, elite, retirees that live in their steel and glass condos in the sky probably have PO Boxes and couldn't possibly be expected to go (gasp) south of the highway to get their mail!  (clutches pearls.)

I think the Post Office will end up giving them the big, hairy finger and doing it anyway.  Personally, I think it's a fantastic move for them.  Fiscal health and future stability of the Post Office aside, putting it in Pepperwood Place or down on Boyrum will be a boost to neighborhoods in that area.  There's tons of parking, all of it free and it's not a pain in the ass to get too.  (Not that getting to the Post Office is a pain in the ass now- it can be depending on the time of day, but in general, it's not.)

So let's say it moves (and I hope it does) well, then what, my fellow citizens should we do with such a space?  Another architectural wonder of steel and glass?  More condos for rich people?  A new jail?

Nope.  I think we should turn it into a park.

To be more precise about it, I think we should turn it into a Square.  I'm a fan of Squares.  Philadelphia endeared itself to me greatly by being littered with random squares.  Quiet acres of greenery in the midst of urban chaos.  We just don't do enough squares in this country.  Along with roundabouts and piazzas, it's one of the excellent features of a city that we just can't seem to get behind.  So let's change that.  Let's make a Courthouse Square.

Should it be just any old Square though?  A-ha!   You've seen through my cunning plan!  No, I think we should take a page from Iowa City's history an add statues of the three Governors of the Iowa Territory: Robert Lucas, John Chambers and James Clarke and the three Governors of the State of Iowa that resided here before the Capitol moved in 1857: Ansel Briggs, Stephen Hempstead and James Grimes.  My original thought was to maybe copy what a lot of small towns in Iowa have and construct a town cenotaph/Veterans Memorial but with so many statues, maybe a fountain?  An classical, iconic one?  (Oooh, you could even go big like the Trevi Fountain and incorporate the statues into the fountain.)

Why a Square?  Well, I like me a good piazza/square for one and for two, if you're looking (as the City is) to push the boundaries of downtown southward into the new Riverfront Crossings District, a square/green space like this would be a perfect kickstarter to development in and around that area.  The University won't be in those spaces along Court Street forever-  they'd be perfect for restaurants/cafes/retail- even more so if there was an attractive, well-groomed park to look at.  Ditto for the new development underway for Midwest One on the opposite side of the Post Office. 

Off the top of my head, I can't think of too many business on the east side of the Post Office but I can't imagine they'd be complaining too much if they had a nice park to look at it instead of the backside of the Post Office.   

I think more green space is good, not bad.  I think it would help drive development in that area and do so in a way that doesn't involve another 20-story whatever going up and I think if done right, it could be a tribute to the history and heritage of Iowa City that, apart from that statue of Irving Weber at the corner of Iowa and Linn Street, we recognize far too little. 

We could call it Heritage Square.

This Week In Vexillology #54

Last week, we were in Sweden-  this week, we're heading back to the tropical sunshine and the reggae beats- so get ready to feel the rhythm, feel the ride, get on down it's bobsled time- COOOOOOOOL RUNNINGS!   Yes, this week in vexillology, we've got Jamaica:

Adopted on August 6th, 1962 for national and civil usage, the present design of the Jamaican flag was the winner of a national contest that members of the public contributed too.  An original design with vertical stripes was considered to similar to what was then the flag of Tanganyika (now Tanzania- stay tuned for next week!) so a saltire, or diagonal cross was used instead.

The saltire recalls the Irish and Scottish roots of many of the inhabitants, while the green represents the land, the yellow the sun shining and the black represents hardships-  and the locals have a saying that captures that nicely:  'Hardships there are but the land is green and the sun shineth.'  (Black, yellow and green are also pan-African colors.)

So put on your Bob Marley records-  go see if they've got that one Jimmy Cliff  movie on Netflix yet and put your hands together for the greatest island in the Caribbean-  Jamaica, mon!  And until next time, keep your flags flying- FREAK or otherwise!

On Bullying and The Martin Case

I've been a little dubious about the wave of 'bullying' that seems to sweeping through the media and our culture lately.  I don't doubt that kids get bullied.  I was picked on a lot as a kid and I emerged with my essential weirdness intact, free from jail or a criminal record and with a steady job to boot. 

For the record:  this wasn't just normal teasing either.  I was blessed with an exceptionally large noggin and kids can be total assholes to each other.   Basketball Head gave way to AirHead- there was a brief period in Junior High where Melon was popular before I found a corner of my high school with people as strange as me (Newslab) and things settled into the more or less acceptable to me moniker of Head.  Which was descriptive and accurate in my mind and by that point the not so pointed questions of "What size baseball cap do you wear?" had long since ceased to bother me. 

That's not say it hasn't left it's mark on me though.  I tend to run alone.  I don't join things.  I avoid sports/work leagues like the plague primarily because I suck at sports and while people always insist 'we're just doing it for fun' there's always some hyper-competitive dipshit that will go out of their way to make it as un-fun as possible.   When some little prick in Boy Scouts wanted to call our sub-group thing 'Three Twigs and A Balloon' I just quit.  It wasn't worth it if it wasn't going to make me happy.

So yeah, bullying does exist.  But there's a wave of zero tolerance policies and cases of suicides sweeping the land that have me feeling old.  Have kids really changed that much?  Is humanity fundamentally doomed when people torment each other to the point where someone wants to end their own life?  Why are people shitheads?  And while you can argue that maybe bullying and learning to deal with assholes is just sort of the process of growing up (it sort of is, to some degree- after all, your boss could be an asshole and you have to learn how to deal with that) does social media just amplify it and make it that much worse? 

I remain dubious:  I really don't want to think that kids are ten times the assholes they were back when I was a kid but evidence is mounting to the contrary...  and then, from the NFL of all places comes the case of Richie Incognito and Jonathan Martin.

Barrels of ink are going to be spent talking about this case:  Jason Whitlock's take is worth reading, Grantland weighed in with a good piece.  And despite the lamentable amount of players standing by Incognito, some- including Brandon Marshall and Terrelle Pryor and standing up and calling 'bullshit' on a culture where things like that are acceptable.

What bothers me about it is that Martin is getting flack for walking away.   He didn't go on Sportscenter and rat everyone out.  He just left.  And someone asked him why and he said so.  I don't think he's spewing dirty laundry all over the place.  I don't think he's broken some kind of code of silence or any other bullshit like that.  There's a world of difference between good natured ribbing/teasing/giving the new guy a hard time and this.  This is disgusting.  In a supposedly professional workplace the fact that shit like this was allowed to go on is unacceptable.   Dan Patrick interview Tony Dungy about it and Dungy said flat out that he had told his veterans in Tampa and Indy that he wouldn't tolerate hazing.   They grumbled about it but they dealt with it.   So this bullshit about it 'being part of the culture' is stupid. As Patrick kept saying: You can change the culture.

But the thing I keep coming back to is that Martin had the courage to walk away.  The man dedicated his life to the love of the game of football and that locker room was so bad that he decided that it just wasn't worth it and walked away.  I don't think you get to the NFL by being half-assed with your love of football.  It's what you do.  It's your job.  It's what you love.  And the fact that he chose to walk away from that speaks volumes to me about how bad it probably really was and how much courage that would have taken.

And maybe that's a solution for bullying and a lesson for life in general.  Walk away.  Nothing is worth being that unhappy in your job or in your life.  Facebook is just a website.  Read a book or two instead.  You only get one life, so you might as well try to be happy about it, right

The Comic Book Wars

I'm not a huge comic nerd.  I never collected them as a kid and outside of Batman and the Saturday morning cartoon versions of X-Men and Spider-Man, that was the extent of my exposure to the world of mainstream comics.  I don't really have a dog in the hunt of 'who's better, Marvel or DC' but the Marvel v DC battle is taking interesting turns and while Marvel's movies are chewing up the box office, DC has long had a more stable, reliable product on the small screen and that's where Marvel is starting to make inroads.

This morning's announcement that Marvel was teaming with Netflix for 4 new shows and a miniseries based on The Defenders was another shot across DC's bow.   DC's announcement that they were planning to spinoff a Flash television show from Arrow, their current hit entrenched on the CW marks another interesting turn as well.  The risks remain the same:  over exposure.  Marvel learned quickly t spend the money on actors, directors and script and do what they had to do to get the product right- because anything less than excellent would be pandering to their fanbase and the comic fanbase is anything but stupid.   I don't think I can think of a Marvel misstep yet and they're willing to take risks as well, which is unusual to me.

DC had Smallville for ten seasons, a breakout hit in Arrow last season and is gearing up for a small screen version of Flash.  There are rumors swirling that this new Batman v Superman clash will involve Nightwing and possibly Wonder Woman- whether those turn out to be true or not, I don't know- but nothing Marvel has (at least that I can think of) will top comic fans desire to see a slugfest between the Man of Steel and the Caped Crusader.  Advantage:  DC

Buuuuuuut, Marvel thinks outside the box.  Which gives them an edge-  Agents of SHIELD, while it started slow is starting to pick up some steam and if upcoming episodes provide an epilogue to the events of Thor: The Dark World, then that's something unseen in entertainment.  Marvel isn't just making movies- they're trying to take their sprawling comic book universe and bring it off the page and into live entertainment.  That's ballsy.  Advantage: Marvel.

DC could have moved towards a similar template that Marvel used to build-up to the Avengers movie but Green Lantern was a huge miss for them- one that's going to look very very foolish indeed if Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy kicks ass next year.  (If they can make a movie with a tree and a rocket slinging raccoon and do it well, then wow.   Sky could really be the limit.)   But DC also has something in their back pocket that Marvel doesn't have: Wonder Woman.  They should throw a metric fuckton of money at it, get the script, director they want and yes, I think Gina Torres would be perfect, but that's just me.  (And yes, Wonder Woman can work:  lookee here! They just need the balls to go out and make it.)

It's interesting to say the least.  Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that while Marvel is more willing to think big and outside the box, DC has the comic book heroes that resonate more strongly in the cultural zeitgeist:  Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman- that's a big trifecta that I'm not sure Marvel can touch...  yet.

But hey, Hollywood seems to have learned that good scripts, the right actors and the right directors can make them a load of cash when it comes to the world of comic books and they don't seem to be in any hurry to stop making them.  And if you enjoy stuff like this (and I admit, I do) then it's one of those rare moments where everyone wins.

The Cigar's Election Day Special!

3:30 PM:  Woot woot!  It's Election Day!!  Have you voted yet?  I did around 11 AM this morning and was the 107th person to do so in my precinct.  Anyway:  it's an off-year election this year so there's bunches of random stuff on ballots across the country and Governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey to decide not to mention our own local elections right here in The I.C.

The 4-1-1 on the issues nationwide can be found here, courtesy of CNBC.  It's a decent round-up and includes an awesome shout-out to our neighbors in Coralville.   Fun ones to keep an eye on:  the counties in Colorado that are voting on whether or not to pursue secession from The Centennial State.  (One of them wants to join Wyoming...  lucky Wyoming!)  There's also a measure in Washington about labeling genetically modified foods that could be crucial to fights on that issue nationwide.  Then, of course, there are the big ones:

Virginia and New Jersey.  Well, really it's just Virginia that's the big one... 

Locally, we have City Council races and the 21-Only Redux.  Looking at the turnout so far from the Auditor's Office, I don't think 21-Only is getting repealed.   Barring massive early voting or a surge in turnout over the next few hours especially at the downtown precincts, it's not looking all that good.  East side precincts- especially at Lemme and Regina are putting up big numbers while downtown ones are dead and the two precincts on Campus- at Quad and the Main Library are sitting at 20 voters total for the day as of 3PM.   Not good news.

Anyway-  it's gonna be a fun night!

5:00 PM:  Don't think anyone is doubting that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is going to be re-elected but the real fun is in Virginia, where Devout Clintonite/Democrat Terry McAuliffe is taking on Republican Ken Cuccinelli.  This one will have some national implications and could shake up the ground for 2016 a bit.   If Cuccinelli somehow pulls a rabbit out of his hat, it'll be a double blow against the Dems.   They've been making inroads in Virginia and a win by McAuliffe would underline his Clinton Connections in the run up to 2016 as well as affirming that Dems are in VA to stay.  In the (unlikely) event of a GOPer win, much will be made of the less than shiny rollout of the ACA and the effect that might have had on the race.

I think McAuliffe pulls it out.  When I'm seeing links like this, encouraging GOPers to 'look on the bright side' because their candidate for Attorney General is WAY ahead, you know they're probably not betting that heavily on Cuccinelli.  Buckets of ink will probably try and parse results one way or the other but it's immaterial.   Next year is the real referendum on the ACA and by this time next year one hopes they'll have the website fixed and we should have a lot clearer idea of what the law entails.  Whether voters will be pleased or pissed off by what they find will do a lot to change the direction of races next year and going into 2016.

5:45 PM:  Got a report that IC06 (that's Mercer Park- my precinct!) has cracked the 300 voter mark.  We're about 15 minutes away from the Auditor's Office posting updated turnout figures but if the East Side/West Side Residential Precincts keep trending with bigger numbers as they have been all day, I'm sticking with the notion that it bodes no good news for the Pro-19 Crowd.  (Unless of course, downtown/campus precincts go big!) 

Thinking back to the Jail vote, we saw a big numbers at the downtown precincts and we're not seeing that today.  Until I see the rest of the numbers, I'm saying 21 only is staying right where it is.  What the trends mean for the City Council race is something I'm still meditating on a little bit.

6:04 PM:  CNN has the Virginia Governor's race too close to call based on their exit polling.  I'm not sure what to make of that as I'm not sure I trust exit polls.  It's early though.  We'll see if it holds up.

6:16 PM:  Interesting numbers from the Auditor's Office...  I'm sticking with my prediction.  21-Only is staying right where it is...   Downtown Precincts at the Courthouse, Rec Center and Horace Mann haven't even cracked double digits and off that grouping only Mann cracked 5% as of 6 PM.  On campus, it's not much better:  The Main Library is sitting at 1.44%, Quad is at 1.43% and only the Karro Hall of Fame- which I believe brings in some people from residential neighborhoods over there is only drawing 8.06% turnout as of 6PM.  The numbers they need just aren't there.  Now, I can't discount the possibility that there could be a silent majority of townies that think 21-only is stupid and should come down but the one time this has gone down to defeat, the students came out and came out big.  Not seeing that in the numbers right now.  (Senior Center just came up:  4.29% with 99 voters as of 6PM...  leading downtown- but still, not seeing the right kind of numbers yet.)

What does this mean for the City Council races?  I have a sinking feeling that we're going to be stuck with the Old Guard:  Susan Mims, Terry Dickens and Catherine Champion.  Lemme, Regina and St. Patrick's are putting up big numbers right now, while Twain, Tate and Grant Wood are not.  Decision could swing on how Mercer/City High and potentially Longfellow decide.

What's up with the West Side, though?  Horn, Lincoln and Weber are in the low double digits but West High is still sitting at 6.92%....  not sure what, if anything that means.

7:06 PM:  Couple of other interesting issues out there.  First up is Colorado's Secession fight.  For those not 'in the know' a goodly (11 counties) chunk of Eastern Colorado (where nobody lives) is pissed off that people in Denver are getting all liberal, Democratic and generally not representing their interests all that well and have thus decided to look into secession to create North Colorado.  (To be fair only 10 counties want to create Northern Colorado-  states have to be contiguous- it's the rule- so county #11 wants to sign up with Redder State to the North, Wyoming.)

Will this actually happen?  Probably not.  Both Congress and the State Legislature have to approve and I doubt either will be willing to do so, but despite the lamentations of this guy, it's sort of a quirky American tradition.  (See: The State of Jefferson, amongst others, for more info.) 

Second, is Washington State and GMO Labeling.  This issue annoys me a little.  We go from golden rice and guys like Norman Borlaug who have saved millions, if not billions of lives to a food fight over labeling because who knows what evil lurks in the heart of your food.   I'm honestly not sure how to feel about it.  Part of me wants to be pragmatic and say, 'shit, most of my food is probably GM food at this point' but the other half of me thinks that yes, sunshine is the best disinfectant and people should be able to make informed decisions about what they're buying.  That said:  the food industry has a point.  These labels could very easily be used to spread lies, disinformation and promote an anti-GM agenda.  I'm not anti-GM.  Borlaug and company already proved that it can do amazing amounts of good in this world.  I think we should be careful with it and not use it willy-nilly (talk to the Aussies about their rabbit problem.  You always want to be careful futzing around with ecosystems, whether it's via food or animals) but I don't think it's evil.  A GM, pesticide laced apple tastes about the same as an organic, pure, non-GM one to me. 

But whatevs:  let them make their case for you.

7:30 PM:  Chris Christie won re-election as Governor of New Jersey.  Not a galloping shock there.  CNN was breaking down some numbers and it looks like he won women and went from 9% to 21% of the African-American vote in New Jersey which they seemed to think made him a good candidate for 2016.  Hmmmm...  I get heartburn thinking about 2016.  I will say this though:  Governors make good Presidents and Christie has shown an ability to reach into demographics that have, of late, not been so friendly to Republicans.   That counts for something.

8:03 PM:  First results are coming it...  early voting has No leading Yes 51-49% on the 21 only issue.  Terry Dickens up 59-38% over Royceann Porter in District B and Champion and Mims for the at large.   But it's early!  I'll post more numbers as they come in.

Turning back to Virginia for a second:  it's still too close to call.  With 80% of the vote in, Cuccinelli has a one point lead over McAuliffe.  It's gonna go down to the wire, I think.

8:26 PM:  Apparently the Auditor's Office is having some technical boo-boos so I had to switch to the P-C for results:

21 Only:  With 24/25 Precincts in, 67% No, 33% Yes.  21 Only Stays and then some.
City Council At Large:  With 22/25 Precincts in, Botchway and Mims are on top right now, but Champion is knocking at the door only two points back from Botchway at 38%.
City Council Distruct B:  Ugh.  Dickens over Porter, 59%-40%.   3 Precincts left.

Still waiting for numbers from the Auditor's Office aaaaaaand...

Virginia is STILL too close to call.  87% of the vote in and Cuccinelli is hanging on by his fingernails to a lead.  Margin is down to 3K and change now.

8:33 PM:  LOLs.   KWWL is taking to Twitter to say that 21-Only has been repealed. (They noticed their error, finally.) Yeaaaaah, not so much.  P-C is still waiting for 3 precincts for the City Council races, but tentatively it looks like Botchway, Mims and Dickens are in.   One out of three ain't bad- though I never really had anything against Mims.  Still waiting on raw data from the Auditor's Office...  

Virginia still too close to call- but McAuliffe has finally eked into a lead.  910K to 906K- 91% in.  Think he's gonna win but it's going to be closer than a lot of Dems would like, I would have thought.  I'll admit I haven't been paying that much attention to this race, but if memory serves, McAuliffe was up big big big in the weeks leading up to Election Day- so the fact the Cuccinelli turned this into a nailbiter can't say anything good.

I've also seen some grousing by GOPers about Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis:  hush.  It's a democracy and those votes only belong to the people that cast them, not to any one particular party.  Besides, by all accounts, Cuccinelli was about as red-bloodedly Conservative as they come- while that might appeal to a lot of GOPers (and Virginians, it seems) it didn't exactly expand your base any.   Nominate candidates with broader appeal and Sarvis becomes a non-issue.  Or multi-task and run against both.   Don't grouse though.  You turned what should have been a double-digit can of whoop ass into a nail biter.  That's not a win, but it ain't nothing either.

8:50 PM:  Other local results of note, courtesy of Twitter and #jocovotes:

Oxford has a new Mayor for the first time since 1981.  Cool.

I paid no attention to the messes in Coralville or University Heights, but AFP overplayed their hand in Coralville and all the incumbents that they targeted look like they've won.  The Miller-Haverkamp-Lane and Company slate in U-Heights won.  Not sure what that means for the St. Andrew's Church development issue, but it means something.

9:06 PM:  So, I'm mildly confused.  The Auditor's Office seems to have gotten it's shit together, so I have raw data to play with (Yay!) but I'm a little confundled.   So, we voted for 2 at large seats and 1 for District B- but does the entire City get to vote for District B?  Because the Auditor's Office has results for the entire City, when per this map, District B is def not the entire City.

Maybe I'm missing something... I might even call the Auditor's Office to find out for sure.  But, if this data is correct and it all counts, then W-T-F, people!  What is the point of having Districts if the entire City can futz with the results?  Let's break it down with the actual District B precincts:

District B: IC23, 17, 18, 01, 16, 06, 24 and 12
Dickens: 1,711 votes- 58%
Porter: 1,294 votes- 41%

But a margin of 507 votes sure looks better than a margin of 1,608 votes city-wide.  I'm going to look into this some more.   It seems kind of dumb to let other people NOT in District B have a say in who represents District B on the City Council- but that seems to be what the Auditor's Office is saying happened, per these results.  I'll dig.   I have to be missing something with this.

9:30 PM:  So much for the 51st State...  nothing for GM Food in Washington State yet, but the Seattle Times has a nice live blog going if you want to stay up.

Apparently VP Joe Biden called Coralville Mayor-Elect John Lundell to congratulate him on poking AFP in the eye?  Or smashing them or something?  Just saw that flip by on Twitter.  I didn't follow the Coralville election too much but AFP was throwing some money around during the last jail vote and took a more subtle line doing so.  They were more open about it this time which made constructing a narrative of 'don't let outsiders meddle in our stuff' all to easy for the incumbents to run with.   The whole 'get off my lawn' attitude would work just about in any race you could think of, especially on the local level.

10:00 PM:  Let's wrap this sucker up, shall we?

21 Only:  They needed big numbers from the students and other downtown precincts and they didn't get them.  Hopefully this puts the issue to bed for good, but you never know.  I still believe the drinking age should be 18 and will happily support any initiatives or efforts that want to make it so but I don't buy the argument that downtown Iowa City is less vibrant than it used to be.  If by less vibrant, you mean, less people throwing up in the bushes on the Ped Mall, I think I'm okay with that.

But we do face a crossroads:  this is a community with boundless amounts of creativity and creative people-  we need development policies that unleash those, not restrain them.  We can be vibrant with more than bars and specialty boutiques- we just need a Council that is willing to be creative about what we do with downtown as a posed to bending to the wishes of a tiny minority of developers that have the money to do big, flashy, sexy things.   Which brings me to...

The City Council:  Meeeeeh.   I'm somewhat displeased by the results yet not surprised.  Botchway is going to be excellent for the City Council, I think and hopefully he has a long and productive tenure speaking up for parts of the community that have been ignored in favor of the downtown business community for far too long.  Mims...  you know, I've never really had anything against Mims.  I think she's pretty solid and deserved to be re-elected--  better than Champion, anyway.  Dickens...   sigh.  Who are we kidding?  Terry Dickens is old time Townie Elite.  It would take the raunchiest scandal I could think of (goats and lampshades would be involved, I'm sure) to dislodge him from the Council now-  Iowans tend to be stubborn about getting rid of incumbents anyway (witness the return of The Moustache and his new Glorious Henchwoman and Senator Grassley's continued status as a Senator which seems to be secured by cutting a campaign ad which always features him mowing his lawn every six years.)   Do I think we'll see serious change from the City Council?  Maybe.  But I doubt it.

National Races:  I'm not sold on Christie as a national candidate yet.  I think this was a big win for him tonight and possibly, possibly there might be a bridge to be built to a more pragmatic, bigger-tent conservatism than what we seem to have no.  In a GOPer primary?  He'll be painted as the Establishment Candidate immediately which might hamper him going up against some of the Tea Party darlings but you can't count him out.  The fact that he improved his performance amongst women, African-Americans, young people and independents tonight could be a post-Sandy bounce or it could be something else.  We just don't know yet.

The Virgina Race is going to be shaped by what spin your read.  GOPers spin is going to say that Cuccinelli took a double digit deficit and turned it into a razor-thin loss and oh by the way, that pesky Libertarian Sarvis and Cuccinelli combined for 53% of the vote to McAuliffe's 47% so RED STATE BITCHES.   Dem spin is going to very carefully avoid talking about the narrow margin and say WE WON WE WON WE WON and not much else.   The reality?  Maybe the opposite lesson of New Jersey:  a bigger tent GOPer could have neutralized Sarvis and won this race.  Ideological purity tests aren't helping the GOP, I don't think.  But there's also an argument to be made that the government shutdown hurt Cuccinelli more- especially in Northern Virginia.  Remove that shutdown and make the argument about the botched Obamacare roll out and suddenly you could have had a different race...and given the fact the Dems poured a ton of money into this to come out with a nailbiter?  Meh.  You could spend all day reading those tea leaves.   Either way, a win is a win.

Thanks for reading!  Until next time...  keeping on truckin!

Iowa v Wisconsin: cornibus taurum tibi sumere

How incredibly frustrating.

That's really the only thing that I can think of after watching this game.  I secretly hoped that it would be closer than it was and had some dim hope that we might even somehow pull out a win, especially after somehow finding away against Northwestern last weekend but I should have known better.   We seemed to revert to that old Iowa problem:  awesome defense and an offense that couldn't find the end zone with a GPS.

The first quarter looked really promising though.  I was somewhat displeased when Stave's early interception didn't turn into points of some kind for us, but I shrugged it off.  Wisconsin's defense is probably the best we've faced since Michigan State's-  just moving the ball the way we were was good enough for me.  But our inability to place the ball into the endzone proved problematic and eventually sealed the game for us.  I've got nothing against kicking field goals but at some point, you have to stop playing by the Marquess of Queensbury rules and go for the damn jugular.

I keep hearing about Greg Davis and his seventy five page playbook- and granted, we've seen more variety than last year's dumpster fire of a season but when you show the rest of the conference six or seven different looks on offense by this point in the season they're undoubtedly quite familiar with them.  Do something the other team doesn't expect.  Don't even worry about doing it well.  Just try that for the sheer novelty of it and see what happens.

Happily for me, the Arsenal v Liverpool match came on so I spent most of the second half watching that and tackling laundry.  (Arsenal won 2-0 to go five points clear at the top of the EPL Table. Go Gunners!)  Eventually, that old Iowa problem did what it always did...  the defense, bless them for being so awesome and actually seeming to have a chip on their shoulders and flashes of dare I say, swagger at times, just got tired, plain and simple and the offense sputtered once Rudock went out with an injury of some kind.

So CJ 'Sunshine' Beathard took the reins and while it wasn't awful, it wasn't awesome either.  It's obvious that if Rudock's knees implode, then with Beathard we might have a QB that could develop into something very interesting.  He's got an arm, I'll give him that- but aside from the lack of a killer instinct, our offense couldn't seem to catch the ball.   Which isn't really on the QB necessarily.   I reckon if we would have cut the number of dropped balls in half this game would have been a lot more interesting than it turned out to be.

It is philosophically however, where this game gets a lot more depressing when you really think about it.  Wisconsin under Barry Alvarez took Hayden Fry's coaching philosophy of power running and smash mouth football and ran with it.   They took the flavor of Iowa football to Madison- and you know what? Right now, they're doing it better than we are.  Now that's depressing to think about.

(Tangent time!  There's also something floating around about a survey on the Kinnick 'stadium experience.'  Let's break that down, shall we:

1.   Wi-Fi and better cell service.  No point in telling people to TXT when they have a problem when no one can get a fucking cell signal.  (Plus, in a totally self-interested way, I want to be able to get Netflix on my tablet when I work overtime at the stadium. #justsaying)

2. Marching Band has been a little blah of late.  I'm not saying we need to go all cray cray like Ohio State, but a little more oomph wouldn't hurt.

3.  Overhaul the music, overhaul everything!  Wisconsin has 'Jump Around.'  We have the Burrito Lift.   We don't need to rip them off, but we can do better than the damn Burrito Lift.

4.  I'm all for honoring Veterans- really and truly, but maybe don't hand out a metric fuckton of red and white pom poms when we play Wisconsin?  Kind of dilutes the Blackout a bit.)

The good news, if you can call it that is that we've probably faced our last really good defense for the year.   We go to Purdue next week and while West Lafayette can be tricky sometimes, if we lose to Purdue I'll just go ahead and say it:  we don't deserve to go to a bowl for one and for two, Gary Barta/Kirk Ferentz need to be placed firmly on the hot seat- because if we fire Ferentz, Barta should follow for sticking us with that obscene buyout!  Michigan got pasted by Sparty today and we get them at home so that's doable.   Nebraska's issues on defense this year are well known and if Minnesota can beat them, we can too.   I can see us going 2-1 down the stretch or 1-2 down the stretch- I'd be very surprised if we go 3-0 down the stretch- but I won't be complaining about it either.   I cannot right now, imagine us not winning at least one more game.

The blueprint for beating Wisconsin was there Saturday and it's there going forward for the rest of the season: cornibus taurum tibi sumere...  you have to take the bull by the horns.

Adventures In Plumbing

The Cigarillo is getting tired of diapers.   He's a smart cookie and figured out quick enough what a toilet is for and after that, it's been off to the races ever since.  I have to listen very, very carefully when I'm vacuuming or, as was the case yesterday, attempting to put away/gain control of our increasing mound of clean clothes.  If I hear the familiar 'rip' of a diaper coming off, I have to move my ass and hustle him into the bathroom otherwise, it'll be piss on the floor!

And while I've got nothing against piss on the floor- after all, the dogs have done it a time or two, I'd just prefer not to clean it up unless I absolutely have too.

Yesterday though, we made the decision to move to training pants.   There was a half-hour period, where I was folding laundry, bouncing back and forth between Arsenal v Liverpool in the bedroom and Iowa v Wisconsin in the living room (yes, I've become that person apparently.  No apologies- even if only one of my teams managed to win) where he literally ripped his pants right off about a half dozen times.  I'd dutifully hustle him into the bathroom:  he'd squirt out some piss, hop off, flush and then run into his room where he performed his allotment of one spider monkey/Evel Knievel jump from his toddler bed to the floor before we'd put diaper and pants back on and the process would repeat itself.

Now don't get me wrong:  if the laundry would have been under control, I would have been okay with it.  I just needed like fifteen minutes to get Laundry Mountain back down to something manageable and everything would have been copasetic.  My chi would have remained balanced, my mood groovy as ever.   But as soon as I got back into the bedroom, I'd barely have time to fold a single article of clothing before he'd be at it again.

And there's the rub.  I can't exactly lose my shit over the kid wanting to go use the big potty, can I?  That's counterproductive.  And yet I about did lose my shit and I hate it when I do that.  I feel like a failure because really, if I take a breath and think about it, at the back of my mind, I know he's almost 2 years old and he really doesn't know any better.  And yet it's just one of those ARRRRRRGH type moments because, well-  laundry!  Sigh.  It wasn't my finest hour but I pushed through.  He squirted out what should have been one long pee into about twelve different parts and then he was fine for awhile.   Arsenal went up 2-0 on Liverpool.  Iowa's inability to put the ball in the endzone continued.  Laundry Mountain because Laundry Hill and then Laundry Mound.   Life was good.

Then the Missus came home and attempted to fix the toilet.   It's needed new guts for awhile now and The Cigarillo's insistent on flushing every individual turd and waving goodbye as it swirls down the potty has helped neither our water bill nor our beleaguered toilet.  So one productive day, I went to Menard's, found some new guts and the Missus took advantage of my presence to take a good whack at getting them in there.

(But wait-  isn't Father Cigar an engineering professor?   Why aren't you doing the toilet stuff and she folding the laundry?   First of all:  hetereonormative gender roles are for pussies.  (LOL.  I think that would be a good t-shirt.)  She hates laundry, I don't mind it.  She hates vacuuming.  I don't mind it.  She loves picking up dog shit/cat shit/gardening, I hate it.  But I don't mind mowing or snowblowing.  And in general she's better at tinkering while I'm just not.  Second of all:  Father Cigar is a Civil Engineering Professor that teaches courses on Winter Highway Maintenance and things like The Singularity.   Hate to say it-- but Mother Cigar is the one that uses the table saw in the family.)

She failed in her attempt and now we're in the market for a new toilet.   She checked the Menard's website and reported to me via text that we might have to hold off on the new toilet for awhile as the cheapest she could find was $200.

Read that again.  Go on, I'll wait.

Yes, $200!  For a fucking toilet.   After I had finished shitting a brick/having a mild stroke, I checked the website and found out that indeed it was true- but, more horrifyingly, this existed.   If you don't want to click on the link, I'll tell you:  it's a $614 toilet.

Yes, that's right.  A six hundred and fourteen dollar fucking toilet.   Who in their right minds would spend that much on a damn toilet?  And don't tell me it's to save water--  that's one hell of a fucking mark-up just to save a penny or two on your damn water bill.    For six hundred dollars the damn thing better massage my ass, wipe it and come with NFL Sunday Ticket, a mini fridge and a fully stocked wet bar.

So now we're in the market for a toilet and a plumber to install it for us- and you can bet your ass I won't be paying two hundred fucking dollars for one.  (I found immediate relief from Home Depot-  their website popped with one for $88 right away.   Phew!)