Halloween Decorations of the Bar Kind

So, Halloween's not exactly around the corner, but bar decorations are always in season. Below is a very nice tap arrangement I encountered 2 Halloween's past while drinking my giant 20 oz. Stella at the bar that I go to when the E train isn't running, and I have to walk to the F to get home. Located in the eastern fringes of the theatre district, O'Brien's, is not far from the diamond street.

This one was taken around the same time, at a curious bar which may sometimes be called Tobacco Road, located on a hidden street near Port Authority. It's some kind of bikini bar, meaning the bartenders sometimes sort of wear bikinis, and have a tendency to overcharge for drinks.

Flaking Paint and Water Damage Subway Art

Can you find the little Chinese boy who's sitting with his legs crossed and wearing a funny hat that makes him look like he might be the emperor (or maybe a chef)? Hint: He's sitting right next to the extremely large french poodle.

This mural of a Teddy Bear climbing a rocky cliff (or resting on a pillow) can be found at 42nd and 8th.

Giant Mussels

I recently went to a Thai restaurant where my friend had a seafood dish. It had in it some of the largest mussels I've ever seen. Their shells had a bit of a greenish tinge. I'm a little ashamed to admit that I find the idea of eating certain shellfish a little challenging. These mussels would fall into this category. I once dissected a clam in school, and it has everything in there, and when you eat one of them, that's what you eat. Now I do eat mussels, clams, and oysters, and I eat them raw or cooked (well, I don't know if I've eaten raw mussels). I guess I have the most trouble with oysters, but I like their briny flavor, and I eat them. Although I did recently have a fried Oyster Po-boy which I wasn't quite up to completely finishing.

The thing is these mussels are huge. The meat is a good 2 inches lengthwise (after cooking). You can't hide what you're eating from yourself. They actually taste pretty good though, much better than some mussels I've had. I still have a couple in the fridge in the doggie bag from that night. I had 1 last night, and I had 1 at the dinner. I think they were too much for my friend, she left them for me. After I had the one last night I kept on thinking I shouldn't have, but it really wasn't bad. It would be better if it was chopped up and mixed in. Below is a picture of the remaining mussels with a cork screw for scale. From my investigations, it looks like they may be New Zealand mussels.

A Way to Reheat Pizza

This is one way that I reheat pizza. I have a gas stove and a pan with a lid that I can put in the oven. First, I turn on the oven, then I turn a burner on high and put the pan on it. While it's heating up I get the slice of pizza out of the refrigerator and put it in the pan. I let the pan heat up until it is quite hot. I put the lid on it and keep it on the stove for another minute or so, then I put it in the oven. The oven need not be at temperature, but I set it to maybe 400F. I leave it in there a while. I check it, and when the cheese is bubbling I take it out. I try to make sure I use a towel or potholder to take it out. I've forgotten to do that more times than I care to remember. If it's not quite bubbly, I might put it in the microwave for 10 seconds or so. I like to drizzle it with olive oil once it's on the plate, though sometimes I put the olive oil on at the beginning, or not at all.

This method has the advantage of not taking as much time as some methods. Also, although just the microwave is faster, too much time in the microwave ruins the crust. I also like to zap take out pizza for 10-20 seconds just to warm it up. It does a good job as long as you don't leave it in too long.

Also, I keep bread in the fridge, and when I want to make toast, and particularly when the bread is a little old, I put it in the microwave for a few seconds. It changes stale bread into something resembling fresh bread. It also helps it toast better, since if it is too dry, it may burn in the toaster. I learned on the TV (Cooks Country) that stale bread is different than dry bread. The moisture in stale bread is still there, it's just bound up in the bread. My experience with microwaving bread is consistent with this. Microwaving it seems to mysteriously change stale bread into fresh bread, as long as you don't do it for too long.

A Good Use for Blue Cheese

I make my own blue cheese dressing. I use ranch dressing and crumble some blue cheese with a fork off of a block of it. Then I mix it into the ranch dressing with the fork, further crumbling it. This way I can use quality blue cheese. This is a good way to use a block of blue cheese if you got one for Xmas. This time I got something called English Farmhouse Stilton, quite nice in a salad. And salad is pretty good with blue cheese in it, not to mention with Ranch dressing even. I like the hidden valley original. I also like cherry tomatoes vs. the large ones as they are generally sweeter. I cut them in half. I use jalapenos instead of bell peppers. Something in the onion family is a must, and most options are acceptable. The salad is helped by a liberal application of freshly ground black pepper, or the dusty, pulverized type of pre-ground pepper. I'm particularly against using wet vegetables in a salad, it's a pet peeve of mine, like getting soup that isn't hot. I'm not against croutons.

Why do I have to Get a Flu Shot?

I don't understand this urging to get a flu shot. I think I've had the flu before, probably quite a few times. But since I never go to the doctor, I haven't been diagnosed with it since I was little, when I had no choice but to go to the doctor. They say you can't get the flu from the shot, but your arm can bother you, you can get a low grade fever, and stuff like that. Well, I'm glad they're so concerned about me, but I'll take my chances. In fact, a couple weeks ago I was pretty sick, maybe I had the flu, I don't know.

Now if they want to tell me, that I should get the shot for public health reasons, then maybe I would get it. But that's not what they say, they say I should get it so that I don't get the flu. At least be honest, don't masquerade a public health concern as a concern for me. I am not afraid of getting the flu, I don't want to get the flu, but I think I have the right to make the decision to get a flu shot or not by myself. After all, I'm not little anymore.

On the Squooshing of Air Out of an Onion Roll

When I have an onion roll, mainly a particular kind, the yellowish spongy kind that I get from 7-11, I like to squoosh it before I eat it. Generally, it's pre-buttered and I accomplish this by sitting on it in the car from when I get it at 7-11 until I feel it is adequately squooshed, as I'm on my way to work. You have to be careful about this, because it's wrapped in plastic wrap, and if you're not careful the plastic wrap may burst resulting in butter on the hindquarters of the pants.

It can spring back quite a bit afterwards. The proper amount of squooshedness is hard to achieve, but even if it's not squooshed enough it's better than if it wasn't squooshed at all. It's hard to squoosh it too much, I think.

Much that has to do with bread, and other foodstuffs (ex-ice cream) has to do with air content. Lately the panini sandwich has become popular in this country, which is a squooshed sandwich. But I've been squooshing rolls for long before this was so. As a child, I would also mix ice cream together until it became more like soft ice cream (I still do). I called it Mushy Goosh (not sure how to spell it, goosh is pronounced with the same 'ush' sound as in 'mushy', but if I spelled it that way it would be pronounced differently (gush). Although it occurs to me that there are 2 pronunciations for 'mushy', I use the deeper one, the one that you wouldn't use in 'gush'). I didn't realize it at the time, but I was basically taking the air out of it. Again, the Italians seem to know about this, as gelato seems to be like this.

One question I wonder about is if bread is better if the air has been sqooshed out of it, or if it was never there to begin with. Take a tortilla for example, is that better, or worse, than a similar bread that had air but was squooshed to the same level? Also, what would it be like to eat bread in a vacuum?

Are Thermodynamics From the Devil?

I can't help but think that relying on randomness and statistics to determine what's true is a little bit like using a Ouija board to find an answer to a question. The temperature of a gas only exists if it is in equilibrium, and nothing is in equilibrium. Something has a temperature only if we don't understand the motion of each of the particles that comprise it.

The word temperature, I imagine, is derived from the word temperament, which relates back to the 4 temperaments. In that fine system things like foods were called cold or hot, moist or dry. I imagine a hot tempered individual would be considered choleric, for example.

Now this term, temperature, has been "borrowed" to describe some thermodynamic property. One that arises, not from treating particles individually, but by treating them as if they were all the same. Applying statistics to people can result in stereotyping, and much worse. Why is it acceptable then, when it comes to smaller things? Back in the day, when we didn't understand how something works, we'd attribute it to God's doing. As they say nowadays, the God of the gaps, but now, if we don't understand things we use statistics, to fill the gap. But since we use statistics and don't say God is responsible, then since it is not God we refer to, it must be the devil.

Harmony and Unconsciousness

I don't know much about music, though I'm reasonably good at listening to it. I've read that it was Pythagoras that found that sounds created by strings with lengths that are integer multiples of each other sound good together. I was wondering what the mechanism was for this. Some scientists use this discovery as a cornerstone in the development of science. There was the music of the spheres and all, which turned out to be untrue. But then there was quantum mechanics and so forth, which now seems to reflect this beauty in nature. This is all well and good, but what I was wondering is, what is it about these integer multiples that makes them sound better? 

So then it occurred to me that the hairs in our inner ears must vibrate like musical strings. It's just that they receive the sounds instead of creating them. Now these "strings" are much shorter than the musical strings, but I'd bet they still vibrate at the frequencies of the sounds they encounter. So, there must be some kind of  spectrum analyzer inside us, which allows our brains to get a frequency spectrum. Then our brains sort out the spectrum, and one simple way to make sense of it all is to sort the different peaks in terms of integer multiples. This would be one of the simplest ways of sorting things out, and maybe that's why sounds composed of integer multiples sound better, because the analysis is simpler. Anyway, I guess this is obvious on some level, but it just occurred to me. So, although the time domain generally seems more intuitive to most of us, we have some part of us, mostly unconscious, that is pretty familiar with the frequency domain too.

Stepping Away From Things

This whole process of stepping away from things seems to be a distinctly human trait. I don't know much about anthropology but I've recently become aware of the fact that the extant subspecies that is identified with the modern human is not homo sapiens, but homo sapiens sapiens. Near as I can tell "homo" is just the word for human, and sapiens is the word for wise. So, modern humans are wise wise humans. Does this mean they are wise about being wise? A kind of meta-wise? Seems neanderthals were also homo sapiens, but not homo sapiens sapiens. Is this homo sapiens sapiens a kind of stepping away from stepping away from things? Another level of consciousness? If so, is there another stepping away coming, and are some homo sapiens sapiens actually homo sapiens sapiens sapiens? And what would that be like?