Home cooking, Japanese style

From the ever-linkalicious kyburg comes this post linking to Yasuko-san's Home Cooking. Yes, it's also available in Japanese.

The Steampunk Stratocaster

A Clockwork Guitar - The Steampunk Stratocaster -- basically a strat with the pickguard replaced with a sheet of brass etched with an image of clockwork. Extremely cool-looking, though of course not nearly as cool as it would have been with actual gears. Hmm.

(from Make: Blog)

Your tax dollars at work

From lapislaz comes this post linking through this SFGate column to this article in USA Today claiming that

The federal government's "no sex without marriage" message isn't just for kids anymore.

Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.

The government says the change is a clarification. But critics say it's a clear signal of a more directed policy targeting the sexual behavior of adults.

"They've stepped over the line of common sense," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education. "To be preaching abstinence when 90% of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It's an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health."

Well, that's one way of putting it. I will refrain from further comment except to point out that, contrary to what you might expect, The Onion is not part of that chain of links.

Tracks: TEOTWAWKI

Put down a pretty clean scratch track and what I think are decent vocals on TEOTWAWKI. As usual, I'm having a little trouble getting the guitar track to sync.

As one can tell from the time on this post, I'm not likely to get much more done today, and what I did do wasn't nearly enough. So it goes.

Saturday wrap-up

After my walk -- a pretty reasonable one -- I did a little shopping. I started with Guitar Center, because I wanted to have a look at a lightweight polyfoam case that they had on sale for $50. This is about half the price of a superficially similar gig bag at Guitar Showcase, so I figured it was worth a trip. Besides, it was the first time since they moved to their new location that I had time and they had any parking.

I should know better than to go in there. It's loud enough to interfere with conversation, and the sales droid who latched on to me was highly annoying. Hint: don't ask somebody looking at guitar cases "Do you know what kind of guitar you have?" Look, you idiot -- don't you think I know what kind of guitar I have? And he seemed totally baffled at my annoyance, too, even after I reminded him of what he'd said. Apparently "do you know" is just his way of starting a question, with no intrinsic meaning to him.

I poked around in different parts of the store, fled when some moron cranked the volume on something up to 11, and got a different salesdroid when I took a second look at the case. Unlike other RoadRunner cases, it doesn't have backpack straps or an adequate front pocket, so it's not an improvement over what I have now.

As I said, I should know better than to go in there. Still, they do have good loss leaders from time.

Next stop was Central Computing, which didn't have anything I wanted, then BevMo, which for once had a reasonable supply of Boomsma Oude Genever. They rarely have more than one bottle in stock, so I bought two.

Finally, I went to the bank to get cash for the Dickens Fair tomorrow, and finished up at the Container Store. Picked up a couple of things there, but the one I was particularly after was a flower-shaped tea strainer called "Audrey". It says so right on the box. I mean, with a name like that... I bought three -- two for us and one for the flower_cat's cousin Audrey. I'll probably have to get a few more next week.

Went out for another shopping expedition -- this time with the Cat -- after lunch. Mainly Trader Joe's for a case of "two-buck Chuck". (eta: the Shiraz, this time.) It's moderately drinkable, and makes excellent cooking wine. We also hit the British shop, which yielded a DVD and some marmalade.