When you’re cooking rice, get a pot with a lid, stick your finger in the pot, right down to the bottom. Put in rice up to the first joint. Add water up to the second joint. Take finger out, bring rice and water to a boil, then turn it down to low till the water’s absorbed. That’s it: your rice will be perfect.
“Visitation.” It’s a lovely portmanteau word; it can mean someone you love coming from far away to see you again; it can mean Joseph Marley has arrived for a long, unpleasant talk about your life choices.
Don’t you just hate that?
In something more along the Marleyian end of the scale, the Globe and Mail brings news that Colin Thatcher, spousicidal narcissist, successful politician, bully, and elite horse fancier, has been approved for 72-hour visitations with his family, one of whom (as mentioned above) he murdered. No plans have been announced for him to visit her, although it would be only fair. Maybe she’ll come visit him, now that he’s closer.
After spending more than 21 years in prison for murdering his former wife, Colin Thatcher will be allowed to return to his family’s beloved Saskatchewan cattle ranch.
No report on whether the horse whom he managed to have trucked into the prison for his personal enjoyment will be a part of the welcoming committee. But surely the nag knows he’s loved. Unlike some people.
The [Ferndale, BC] facility includes a nine-hole golf course and horse stables.
From Crime Library:
In 1999, according to Salter New Media, Colin underwent golf therapy and was “on a regiment of thirty-six holes a day,” according to the Warden Strother Martin. It was hardly the kind of sentence Tony Wilson expected for Colin after the cold-blooded murderer of his wife.
Apparently, the publicity wasn’t too great for Ferndale, and they tossed him to Winnipeg.
A three-member National Parole Board panel ruled Friday that the 67-year-old former Saskatchewan cabinet minister can leave Rockwood Institution near Winnipeg for a series of 72-hour unescorted visits with his family.
Greg Thatcher, who was 13 when his parents divorced, sat next to his father throughout Friday’s two-hour hearing and assured the panel the visits would pose no danger.
“The fact that we want him to stay two or three days with our children speaks volumes to our comfort level,” he said.
“We’re all cognizant of the fact we don’t have a lot of years left, so we’d like the chance to reconnect a little bit more.”
He smiled as he said he expected his dad would be telling him what he’s done wrong in running the ranch — like any father might. The ranch is a legacy from Colin’s father, Ross Thatcher, a former Saskatchewan premier and member of Parliament.
And I expect that at some point someone will be telling Colin Thatcher what he‘s done wrong, too. I wonder where that ranch is…Thatcher Avenue, perhaps? It’s so easy to find famous people.
Or infamous.
37 Kalmia Crescent, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, S6J 1L2; that’s the house address. The family doesn’t actually live on the ranch anymore, and I therefore doubt that’s where Colin will be staying. I will leave off the phone number; they’re listed.
Need directions to the ranch? 33 km west of Moose Jaw. From Caronport take Caron access road 2 miles west. Don’t say I never done nuthin’ for ya.
Some enterprising, web-savvy hand-sewing type (yes, apparently they exist, although they are rarer than kiwa hirsuta) has created a pattern to sew your own cuddly stuffed Kiwa Hirsuta. Apparently, the whole world is focused on the appetizer course-enhancing qualities of the incredibly rare and scientifically fascinating creature; first it was described as “the size of a salad plate,” and now, this new creation has stripped the gloves off (although presumably donned the bib) and actually called itself “Tasty.”
Inspired by the recently reported kiwa hirsuta lobster, I designed a plush toy. Although she’s not anatomically correct in every detail, I think she is an identifiable member of this new species.
For anyone interested in sewing one of their own, I’ve developed a pattern with instructions and released it under a Creative Commons license. I don’t recommend this project for people averse to hand-sewing or turning things inside out—there’s plenty of both involved. But it’s all simple sewing and assembly if you understand the basics of seaming and stuffing.
And, presumably, roasting and grilling.
The ever-reliable BoingBoing featured a bizarre Japanese (but I repeat myself) television show from the 60’s called Gimme Gimme Octopus. Now, I don’t speak Japanese, and I don’t take drugs, and I’m not sure, from viewing this, which would help more, but it seems to me that the baby octopus is like the MacGuffin in an old Looney Tunes cartoon, being carted around from place to place, always in danger (in this case, of being turned into yummyyummy tako servings) and never actually able to take action to save itself even when, as happens in this video, it gets dropped into water.
OMFG! The octopus fell in the water!!!! What will we dooooooooooo?
Apparently, take more drugs.
The set design comprises, as these links mention, the kind of background pattern Joan Baez might have worn on a skirt, and the costumes are very H.R. Pufnstuffian, although it must be said that the trio of “dragons” look more like Sigmund the Sea Monster, the Grimace, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, all after having gone on the Anna Nicole Smith “Trimspa” diet. And that walrus is channelling Tammy Faye Bakker with all that mascara.
Man, I miss Sigmund. And that curly-headed friend of his who was also on Family Affair? I think he was my first love.
In any case, I hereby present Gimme Gimme Octopus video. Prepare to scrub out your eyeballs with bleach afterwards, if you’re not still on a second-hand high.
Here you can actually purchase this chemical-fuelled monstrosity. It’s worth the twenty bucks for the marketing copy alone, which will thrill and amaze your friends (at the thought you’d pay $20 for this thing).
The most accurate summary of this late 60’s Japanese kids show we have read states: “An octopus and a peanut are in love with the same walrus.” Playing kind of like a Sesame Street segment on an entire sheet of acid, Gimme Gimme Octopus boggles the mind with it’s impenetrable story lines and bizarro characters. In one segment the octopus and the walrus steal a sleeping dragons smoking bowl. They then sit in a tree and sniff the smoke. Soon their eyelids are half open and they seem to be laughing and swaying back and fourth. Makes the Mighty Mouse magic dust controversy seem tame in comparison.
The whole series (four, count ’em, four DVDs) is available here in case you can’t find your old Thunderbirds tapes and need some brain food. And here, if you’re still looking for punishment, are some more free episodes.
Now I know why psychiatrists call them “episodes.”
Like, seriously, people. I am begging, here!
So I’m house-sitting. It’s not too strenuous, asking nothing more of me than checking the mail, cleaning the litterbox, and making sure the cats don’t starve (by the look of them it would take a couple of weeks at minimum). Okay, so the litterbox thing doesn’t thrill me, but it’s better than staying in my own hovel, scraping mushrooms out of the carpet and moss off the interior walls and eating my own crappy food for a week. Hmmm, chocolate pudding and steak versus brown rice and marked-down veggie slaw? That’s a tough call…
But suddenly, there is so very much more on the line.
Yesterday I reached into the freezer, as I had done each of the days of my occupation. And, as I had done each of those days, I pulled out something meat-oriented. Meaty. Meatful. Something of meatification.
No, I did not know what it was. I’m single; I’m undomesticated; I’m “poverty vegetarian.” I mean, I’m sitting here at two-bloody-thirty in the morning, snacking on green salad! I’ve never seen a piece of meat that big outside of those decorative and charming Christmas displays of skinned sheep’s head. Had I known, I’d have returned it to the freezer unthawed, unseen, untouched. Ignorance, truly, is bliss.
It was a four-pound, Grade A dilemma.
Thinking, perhaps, that steaks looked like that when they huddled together in the freezer for warmth, I blithely plopped the meatastic mass into a bowl and put it on a shelf in the fridge, as I remember from my distant, wholesome Ontarian past that you’re supposed to do when you thaw meat. I took it out this morning to take a look at it.
Pot roast.
What the hell do you do with pot roast, people???? I have no Joy of Cooking here to instruct me in the esoteric ways of the oven. I have no Urban Peasant, leaning benevolently over my shoulder and croaking, “Browning, the secret it is.”
Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi! You’re my only remaining hope.
Does anyone out there know how to cook pot roast?
raincoaster 