Familiarity, the first myth of reality: What you know the best, you observe the least.

Devotion, the second myth of reality: The faithful are most hurt by the objects of their faith.

Conviction, the third myth of reality: Only those who seek the truth can be deceived.

Fellowship, the fourth myth of reality: As the tides of war shift, so do loyalties.

Trust, the fifth myth of reality: Every truth holds the seed of betrayal.

             -Magic, The Gathering

Good bye.

I'll be somewhere else.  This one has served it's purpose.  It has been an honor to have you as my guests.

If it intrigues you, send me a comment with your e-mail and I'll tell you where I am (if it so suits me and you haven't been a dick in the past).  I'll be closing down the comments and mothballing this experiment later this month.  I'll kill the comment section at the end of August.

Beyond Freedom and Dignity

Money becomes insane, and people with it. 

At night the place is almost dark, economizing light. Economy, economy, economy - that too becomes an insanity. Luckily the government keeps bread fairly cheap. 

But at night you feel strange things stirring in the darkness, strange feelings stirring out of this still-unconquered Black Forest. You stiffen your backbone and you listen to the night. There is a sense of danger. It is not the people. They don't seem dangerous. Out of the very air comes a sense of danger, a queer, bristling feeling of uncanny danger. 

Something has happened. Something has happened which has not yet eventuated. The old spell of the old world has broken, and the old, bristling, savage spirit has set in. The war did not break the old peace-and-production hope of the world, though it gave it a severe wrench. Yet the old peace-and-production hope still governs, at least the consciousness. Even in Germany it has not quite gone. 

But it feels as if, virtually, it were gone. The last two years have done it. The hope in peace-and-production is broken. The old flow, the old adherence is ruptured. And a still older flow has set in. Back, back to the savage polarity of Tartary, and away from the polarity of civilized Christian Europe. This, it seems to me, has already happened. And it is a happening of far more profound import than any actual event. It is the father of the next phase of events. 

And the feeling never relaxes. As you travel up the Rhine valley, still the same latent sense of danger, of silence, of suspension. Not that the people are actually planning or plotting or preparing. I don't believe it for a minute. But something has happened to the human soul, beyond all help. The human soul recoiling now from unison, and making itself strong elsewhere. 

DH Lawrence

A Letter from Germany (1924)

When I was a callow youth, I read Skinner's books and dreamed moon-eyed into a bright future.

Now I am an old man and I just shake my head.

I think that maybe Skinner was right about a lot of things, but a lot of the wrong type of people got hold of his idea and used them to create the monstrosity that passes for our culture.

We have been pressing at the bar created for us by our government and corporations for forty years now.  The theories and predictions of Skinner are proven by looking at the society around us, created by flickering images of a Hollywood-scripted Utopia in our living rooms as a stimulus and free things handed out by the government as a reward.

Lawrence traveled through Germany in 1924.  Hitler was nothing then.  In a sense, Hitler was never anything, just an opportunist who rode the will of a people who had become something more primitive.  

Again from the letter:

Heidelberg full of people. Students the same, youths with rucksacks the same, boys and maidens in gangs come down from the hills. The same, and not the same. These queer gangs of young Socialists, youths and girls, with their non-materialistic professions, their half-mystic assertions, they strike one as strange. Something primitive, like loose, roving gangs of broken, scattered tribes, so they affect one. And the swarms of people somehow produce an impression of silence, of secrecy, of stealth. It is as if everything and everybody recoiled away from the old unison, as barbarians lurking in a wood recoil out of sight. The old habits remain. But the bulk of the people have no money. And the whole stream of feeling is reversed 

And it all looks as if the years were wheeling swiftly backwards, no more onwards. Like a spring that is broken, and whirls swiftly back, so time seems to be whirling with mysterious swiftness to a sort of death. Whirlingto the ghost of the Middle Ages of Germany, then to the Roman days, then to the days of the silent forest and the dangerous, lurking barbarians. 

Something about the Germanic races is unalterable. White-skinned, elemental, and dangerous. Our civilization has come from the fusion of the dark-eyes with the blue. The meeting and mixing and mingling of the two races has been the joy of our ages. And the Celt has been there, alien, but necessary as some chemical re-agent to the fusion. So the civilization of Europe rose up. So these cathedrals and these thoughts. 

But now the Celt is the disintegrating agent. And the Latin and southern races are falling out of association with the northern races, the northern Germanic impulse is recoiling towards Tartary, the destructive vortex of Tartary.It is fate; nobody now can alter it. It is a fate. The very blood changes. Within the last three years, the very constituency of the blood has changed, in European veins. But particularly in Germanic veins.

Walk out in the streets of your city.  The feeling is there.  Oh, there will be folk who will scoff at you, who will decry your senses as paranoia, but something has changed in our world.  

Something newer is stirring here.  The seeds of something have been laid by the last forty years of human experimentation.  The mores and cultural brakes have been disabled by the wealthy to better transfer the wealth of the country to their redoubts.  The die has been cast, we are waiting for the change.

Jealosies

In all times kings, and persons of sovereign authority, because of their independency, are in continual jealousies, and in the state and posture of gladiators; having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another; that is, their forts, garrisons, and guns upon the frontiers of their kingdoms; and continual spies upon their neighbors; which is a posture of war.

—HOBBES, Leviathan

Add on Note:  You might want to read this

I have been spending time lately, thinking about the "revelation" that the NSA is spying on other governments.  This will probably piss folks off in tin-foil-hat land, but I have come to the conclusion that this is a very good idea.

I don't have any preconceived notions about the ethical nature of government.  Control of things is the government's raison d'etre.  There are limits to what they should be allowed to do, and those are clearly defined in the constitution.  The US government  has spent the last 21 years (or more) patiently shaving the margin between what is the maximum activity allowed by the constitution and their actions.  In quite a few cases, they have broken through into illegal actions and there has only been minimal outcry.

Maybe I am being paranoid about the other countries of the world, but my travels (and they aren't trivial) leads me to hold the opinion that a majority of the other countries in the world may well be run by bigger assholes than the assholes who run ours.  I genuinely feel that keeping an eye on them is a great idea.  They aren't really our friends.

This basic belief complicates my view on Mr. Snowden.

When he came out and informed the world that the US was running a large scale information harvesting program on its own citizens, I was outraged.  In my opinion, this action was a massive governmental overreach, clearly unconstitutional and frightening in its implications.

Then he had to go and ruin it for me.  He then went on to outline how our government spies on other governments.  Idiot.

Look when it comes to peeking in on other governments, the NSA was doing what it was designed to to do.

From Wikipedia

The National Security Agency (NSA) is the central producer and manager of signals intelligence for the United States, operating under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense. Estimated to be the largest and costliest of all U.S. intelligence organizations, NSA is primarily tasked with collecting and analyzing information and data of foreign intelligence and counterintelligence value, including through clandestine means.[5] The agency is also responsible for the protection of U.S. government communications and information systems,[6] which involves information security and cryptanalysis/cryptography.

I am not seeing anything that the NSA does in monitoring other governments as a bad thing.  Keep it up lads.  You are earning your nickels honestly.

So when Snowden informed the world of how we spy on other countries, he did in fact break the law and break faith with the rest of us.

The only thing funny in this whole charade is the way that Putin handled the issue.  Masterful.  When he uttered the statement I started chuckling

"If he wants to go somewhere and there are those who would take him, he is welcome to do that," Putin said. "If he wants to stay here, there is one condition: he must stop his activities aimed at inflicting damage to our American partners, no matter how strange it may sound on my lips."

Now, how to handle him is unclear.  He did the country a huge favor for pointing out an incredible government overreach.  He did the country a disservice reminding the world we try to have our fingers in every pie, taking the temperatures.

Who We Really Are.

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

Winston Churchill 

I have been thinking about the American myth for some time now.  I have also come to the conclusion that the fever-dreams of the left and the right concerning the erstwhile freedoms lost are not the grieving for the destruction of cherished freedoms.  They are instead the sullen denial of the fact that we were all complicit in the charade that there were any particular freedoms there in the first place.

Look, writing on the internet is a nice release for frustration.  This blog is a wonderful and convenient diary.   I really doubt that I have any effect on my readers opinion.  The usual reader usually scans my work for something that they agree with, and if that isn't readily available, they move on.  The blog has no pretense of being private, just like any e-mail that I send.

We decry the lost privacy when the phone companies hand over metadata, and we find out that the good old Post Office has been doing the same thing for years.  Hell, we hand over the same data all the time to companies like Google, for some reason, that doesn't bother us quite as much.  Truth of the matter is, we don't really care about our privacy when it is more convenient for us to forget it. Especially if it gives us a good deal on our Cheetos.

The vast bulk of us don't give a rats ass about our military adventures overseas.  We load our troops onto the airliners and forget about them until one of them comes back with a flag draped over them. Then there is some uncomfortable silence and we move on.  We pay for our collective guilt with words like "heroes" and a fairly well-funded VA, but those are cheap.  What is important is that we keep our beaks dipped into the declining pool of petroleum resources called "the Middle East".

Look, get over the idea that you, as 0.0000003% of the political corpus, have any real say in the deal. Maybe if you would spend more of your time organizing you might get up to the table, but I kinda doubt it.  The internet offers you a chance to bitch easily at those with whom you disagree, to send messages and attaboys to those who agree with you. The Net really doesn't allow you to change anything, any more than a single frenetically vibrating atom can change the temperature of the solution of which it is a part.

I have recently come to the conclusion that nothing that is currently being done is particularly heinous. Trying to control a fractious populace and keep an eye on a world filled with actors more than willing to inadvertently leave cutlery in one's back is a bit of a juggling act.  I have a feeling that the excesses that we are currently decrying are being ratcheted back by the twin acts of folks starting to take their privacy seriously and the government pulling back from an obvious overstep.

Look, this kind of stuff has come and gone before.  What I am seeing in the blogs is the usual claptrap about hurt feelings, embarrassment when one realizes that writing something leaves tracks, and a cheerful misreading of an old planning document that has become a hardened scripture, viciously argued over by theologians.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Winston Churchill 

Starting a Holy War or this is how to write down a recipe

My sons want to learn how to cook.  I want them to learn how to cook as well.

Now, I realize that this statement will be a throwdown to both my Jewish buddies and my hillbilly redneck compadres; but I can kick all your asses when it comes to cooking brisket.

First things first, indirect cooking on charcoal is the only way to go.  If you are doing it some other way, go sit with the women.  Always remember the two great truths; Charlie don't surf and chicks can't barbecue.

Now, an aside on the freakazoids who spend thousands of dollars buying shit that will do the same thing as a $50.00 grill from the hardware store.  Get a life.  You aren't getting better results, you are just spending more money.  

A note on the pan of water underneath the brisket.  You know, water is always enough, but if you have a beer in the house, throw that in too.  I know in my heart of hearts that the beer does nothing.  But it just seems to make the barbecue God happy.

Marinade

• 1/2 cup mushroom infused soy sauce
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 cup mirin
• 1/4 cup nuoc mam
• 1 heaping teaspoon horseradish
• 1/4 cup pickled ground chili w/garlic
• 3 tablespoons garlic powder
• 1 cup brown sugar.
• 3 tablespoons garlic powder
• 2 tablespoons black pepper

Mix marinade well, put brisket and marinade in seal bag and seal...Marinate overnight.  when you are  taking it out and getting it ready to put on the grill, take a syringe and inject the brisket with around 30ml of the marinade.

Before

Brisket goes on @ 0838 PST.  I always start the brisket fat side down.  Just my way.

First alder chips go on @ 0930 PST.  Soak the chips for a half hour minimum before they go on.  Do not buy the curiously modified heating stove pellets that the purists overpay for.  Get real wood chips. The great truth is wood is wood.  There are wienies out there who will wax poetic about the various flavors of the wood chips and the je-ne-sais-quoi that they give the meat.  Horseshit.  Wet hardwoods burning under limited oxygen supply is wet hardwoods burning under limited oxygen supply.  Buy what is cheap and available.

You will need to make two (2) of these quart jars for the whole project.  Minimum soaking time should be around 1/2 hour.

Soaking the chips

I hear constantly from the freakazoids that the temp of the grill has to be monitored with digital thermometers etc, etc, etc.  Bullshit.  Is it hot? Take the temp of the meat every two hours for the first four hours.  Then go to every hour.

The key is to watch the charcoal (as an aside....briquets are not charcoal, they are some weird alien droppings that you don't want to have anywhere near your food).  You might have to close the dampers to restrict oxygen, you might have to add more charcoal.  Pay attention, figure out what it is you are doing, learn a skill, don't buy something that fakes a skill.  The key is is that the amount of oxygen allowed into the grill will regulate the temperature.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Simple mechanical rotary dampers do the job just fine.  There will always be some douche telling you that what you are doing couldn't possibly be right.  All they are doing is publicly announcing their small penis.

How you regulate hot appropriately

Mop Sauce

• 1/2 cup rice vinegar
• 1/2 cup nuoc mam
• 1/2 cup water
• 3 tablespoons grated ginger
• 2 tablespoons sesame oil
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons Tapatio

Or, if you are feeling really lazy, use the leftover used marinade as a mop sauce.  Cut it with boiling water 50:50 and slosh it on freely.  The barbecue-orthodoxy freaks will come unglued at this one, but fuck 'em, it works just fine.

I am of two minds about mop sauce.  First side is, it doesn't really do anything.  But the second side is, it gives you a chance to poke and prod at the meat and get an idea what it needs.  It doesn't hurt anything, so I go with it.  Start brushing it on at the two hour mark when you take the first meat temp read,  slosh some on when you get curious.  

What I found in the backyard, gotta love volunteers

At two hours, slosh the brisket with mop sauce, rotate it 180-degrees on a horizontal axis, and take the temp.  Hit it with more smoke chips and you are good for another hour.  Go and mow the lawn.

At two hours.  Temp up to around 120 degrees, shut the dampers some more 

After you finish sweeping the sidewalk, time to give the meat another mop, add some more wood chips.  You should be around three hours out now.  More wood chips, mop it, poke and prod it, get an idea of how it is doing.  Turn it 180 degrees on the vertical axis.  What you want is the nice crust to develop on all sides.

Three Hour look, life is good

Now you are at four hours.  A little work here.  After you crust up the meat like this, it will get up to around 160 degrees and get stuck there.  Don't know why, don't really care, just happens.  So now you plait together some aluminum foil and you will seal wrap the brisket with a third of a can of my special secret magic ingredient and put it back on the grill.

Special secret magic grilling ingredient

What's not to like as a braising liquid?  Beer, tomato juice, clan nectar, salt, and lime.

This is around 4.5 hours

Now notice that we have moved the brisket to the center.  Indirect heat is't necessary anymore, we are braising the thing.  Gotta be careful here.  Every 30 minutes you have to turn the brisket 90 degrees. You will let this go three hours.

From the comfy chair to the right of the stairs

Now, don't be stupid like your old man.  Put the aluminum foil on some kind a tray.  Tearing the foil when you turn it kinda defeats the whole process.

Now we have it right, on the tray

Now is when you get the laundry started. I know, but you might as well get it done while you are watching.

I am thinking that the side will be flowers this year

It is 17:00 PST.  I have been turning the tray for hours now and the coals are finally dying.  It is still quite warm in the barbecue.   A lot of the "elite" barbecue folks claim the need for a faux cambro or a cambro.

Temp at 17:05 

WTF

The residual heat from the dying coals will serve the exact same action.  Load the barbecue right and the charcoal will finally gas out around nine hours and the temp will be at around 160 degrees.  Hell, if it is too hot, lift the lid and let some heat out.