That’s a very gorgeous custom chopper…my photo doesn’t do it justice. The dude is back for the second week in a row, just hanging out. He and his lady friend leave early in the evening and wander back around around midnight. They have a nice enclosed trailer for the bikes, and basically just sleep under the stars on a full-size cot. The bikes go inside to keep the dew off, natch. Note to Self: find out where they’re hanging out…has to be better than the bar at the MK.

I, on the other hand, am customizing this hunk of junk. As in, getting all the light bulbs to work. That’s a 1978 Chevy Big 10 in damn near the ugliest color combo you could specify. Coffee-brown over curdled-cream. Yuck. It’s pictured from the good side, as well. But — under the hood is sweet 454 big block, with a Holley 4bbl carb. Pulls like Paul Bunyan’s ox - you can feel the front end lift if you stab it, even when doing 60. Just the slightest of knocking, too. As I mentioned, I got all the light bulbs to work, so I was able to get it inspected and tagged. So it’s now road-legal…ladies, lock up your moms! The automatic trans is in decent shape, though it has a hard time kicking up from second. I’m considering a swap for a four-speed manual (with a Hurst shifter, of course.) All of the emissions crap that was just starting to creep into vehicles at the time of this dinosaur’s manufacturing is long-gone, of course. So, a dual-exhaust with headers are a must. I’m thinking that some cheap-ass JCWhitney bucket seats are in the future, as well. Velour, probably. heh heh

The family stray, currently bunking at my brother’s trailer, has turned out to be a leather worker. He’s pretty good now, and will only get better. I had him whip this up for me, which, who knows when you’re going to need a quick & sly shot of Knob Creek? Yeah, yeah, I know all about the spread of open container laws in the land of the semi-free…screw ‘em. If a cop can’t respect a hand-tooled flask, that’s just my bad luck. There are some slight imperfections in the staining, but I get stuff at cost, so no bitching.

I’m a crotchety, cranky, cynical piss-ant turd*, but this salesman is my hero. Just click, scroll and read, toads.

I deal with a lot of people on a day to day basis. Some are honorable, some are goat-roping assholes. And that’s okay. You are what you are. I can smoke you out pretty soon, anyway, and will treat you accordingly.

Here’s my issue: every time someone tries to really screw me, I mean really pole me, I realize they are avid churchgoers. Sunday School teachers, deacons, and such.

What the fuck is that all about? I am not casting a wide net here, I am not denigrating churchgoers as a cohort, I am merely proclaiming that every time someone tries to fuck me they are good churchfolk, and are extremely active in their churches.

If you can’t fall in love with a line like “goat-roping assholes,” you’re a panty-waist.

* I need to find a way to say SOB without slurring my sainted mother, who taught me to read and write at the age of three, forever damning me to this literary hell of being unable to stop doing either. Better that I was a true half-wit with naught on my mind but fishing and tobacco and rotgut.

Straight-ahead, good-times, Hammond organ and wah-wah pedal Texas Funk, by Mickey and the Soul Generation. Every good boy and girl needs ‘em lots of this…

(5mb, and worth every download second)

(Here’s the album it came from if you want more. Which you do, right?)

On the recommendation of someone, and pursuant to this mess, I’ve downloaded and installed iTunes to manage my musica. Now it’s sitting there gobbling up files, and massive CPU cycles, with the message “Converting [bloody well everything]“. No ‘from’ or ‘to’ info…just ‘converting.’ And the cute little GB indicator is creeping skyward.

I feel kinda queasy.

NOT SO BAD UPDATE: WMA files, that’s what it was. Only added half a gig. Which, is one hell of a lot of storage, if you’re where I’m from. And as usual with these new musica program installs, I unearthed a whole butt-load of stuff I haven’t listened to in years, like Beck. I played the everloving hell out of Odelay…still stands up. Sonic Youth, same thing. Sad to have lost track of so many threads of genius. Couldn’t tell you what SY is up to, but I killed two Walkmans playing Daydream Nation back in my sysprog days (actually weekend nights, but you know). Not that much different from the iPodders of this strange new world, except I would have needed a flat-bed to carry all that music around.
Going back to Houston, to do the hot-dog dance.
Going back to Houston, to get me some pants.
Tee hee…

NB: those pork ribs were delicious. Falling off the bone tender. Here’s what I did:

- Rub applied the night before, and swaddled in plastic wrap (that stuff will make a preacher cuss).
- Smoker lit at approximately 2pm; charcoal starter, with largish hunks of pecan wood for smoke.
- Flames died down, rack of ribs go on smoker, lid down at approximately 2:30pm.
- Smoked heavily for the next 2.5-3 hours, at 200-250°.
- Wrapped ribs in foil at approximately 5:00pm. Poured half a beer into the foil wrap. NB: I also added a beer-can chicken to the smoker at this point.
- Continued cooking for 2.5-3 hours.
- Pulled ribs and chicken from grill around 7-ish.
- Let ribs sit in foil wrap for 30 minutes.
- Chop and eat some chicken.
- Chop and eat some ribs.

Now, there are several things that I think helped make this a better rack of ribs than I usually get.

1. Keeping the temps a little bit higher than I do for a thick cut of meat; seems counter-intuitive to me.
2. Lots of smoke early; I poked and prodded the coals a whole lot LESS than I usually do. It seems to have made for better smoke. These babies were pink all the way through, and you could taste it in every bite.
3. Foil wrap; since it’s a thin cut, it will lose moisture rapidly, and we need moisture for “falling off the bone tender.”
4. Beer; is there anything beer is NOT good for? I answer my own question.

I still swear that rubs are over-rated as a flavoring engine. On ribs, since they’re skinny, it’s an OK thing — you’ll get the flavor in every bite. But the muss and fuss of putting the rub on the night before and wrapping it in Saran Wrap is pointless. I think you could make a thin sauce out of the rub spices and anything liquid (beer? Of course!) and get more bang for your buck. On the bigger cuts, briskets and shoulders, why not just go ahead and inject that thin sauce and get a smoke/spice flavor mix in every dang bite? Makes sense, but I think several weekends of experimentation are in order.

Now, on the rub part, I’m perfectly happy to be corrected by you geniuses. Maybe I’m doing it wrong, or using the wrong ingredients. I’ve used professional pre-mixed stuff, and made my own from what looks good on the spice shelf. Nothing has worked. There’s just no flavor penetration down into the thick parts of the cut, and if that don’t happen, what’s the point? What I’m looking for is hint of jalapeno or cayenne all the way through, and I ain’t getting there. Thus, the injection idea.

And yes, I’m making this all up as I go along. Pure seat of the pants. We’re talking about cheap cuts of meat here. I haven’t made anything inedible yet, and there are always people around who will finish off what I don’t eat.

Plus, you know — the advancement of the Art of the Smoke. It’s my duty…

My brilliant blog buddy with the Ph.D in Houston says Son Volt’s latest is practically as good as Trace.

I’m a Tweedy man myself, but Kevin has good ears.

“I can only hope they’ll wake up and see the padding on the wall.”
- Swen Swenson

I thought I’d give this iPod business a spin without actually buying an iPod. Instead, I have the sweet Treo 600 cell phone (which so far, has given me no reason to be replaced by the reportedly sweeter Treo 650.) As part of the deal of buying it, I got PocketTunes, a PalmOS MP3 player, for free. I already had a big 1G SD card that I’d bought on special at Sam’s Club. So all I needed, theoretically, was a pair of earphones.

Now, I’ll just tell you straight out that I hate ear phones and ear buds — they are painful, and if they’re not, they’re falling out of my ears. I’d never really noticed before ear buds that my ears are oddly constructed, but apparently they are. To use any of that type of device, I have to wedge them in so deep as to be dangerous. And not just to me, but to anyone else, since once they’re in, I can’t hear a damn thing. But I went ahead and bought some of these Seido thingies, since they can be switched back and forth from a music headset to a phone headset, and thus actually have some value besides clogging up my head.

So, I loaded up one gigabytes worth of music on the SD card, about 400 songs, and took it with me on the next plane trip. And played it during the hour of flight-time that I was able to turn on acceptable electronic devices.

Good. Gravy. I absolutely hated it. For one thing, even my favorite artists of all time have some horribly crappy songs that should never have been recorded. The amount of filler in those 400 songs is easily 50%. For another thing, how can anyone stand being disconnected from the real world like that? I’m having a hard time imagining a better situation for listening to music than on a plane where there is zero desire to interact with my fellow human beings, and even then I felt like I was too far into a bubble.

OK, so a head full of music and nothing else is not for me. Fine. But I still love listening to music when I’m driving, so we’ll try one of those FM broadcast tuners buddies. Found one online for $30 and ordered it up. Plugged in all the wires and connectors, tuned the truck to 88.1, and hit Play. And everything worked like it was supposed to, so for that I should be happy, probably. But it still doesn’t get around the fact that bloody well 50% of the music on my SD card was filler. I spent half my time running the stupid thing, hitting the Fast Forward button, sometimes 3, 4 songs in a row.

Which means, I guess, that I’m going to have to start making playlists. And that gets to my point about the iPod thingy. It seems like whenever I read about them, most folks have dumped 40 gajillion CDs into them so that they have all their music right there in the palm of their hand. So, the questions are: are all these people spending time building big-ass playlists? Do they just hit FF all the time like I was doing? Or do they sit through the krep? Or does the iPod have some magic algorithm that skips the sawdust? Or am I just a picky sonofabitch that doesn’t have the patience for those little-known jewels hidden between what I judge to be the good songs?

Bottom line, it looks like the iPod is yet another indication that my time has passed. I just don’t get it. Not till I have the time to eff around with it a whole lot more. And by that time, I’ll be past the point of needing it, really…something new will have come along, like a brain implant that plays the songs I want to hear over satellite directly into my head, and it will be controlled by eyebrow twitches.

Note to musicians: please, for your sake and mine, think long and hard about having more than one or two slow, mournful, drag-ass eulogies per CD.

So, if you’re in North or Central Texas, and you’re hankering to get your kayak on, go see my man, Eric.

And you can keep your comments about the 1997 tabled-up design and Drunken Jackass-Photoshop to yourself, thankyouverymuch.

I defrosted two largish chicken breasts from the same Fresh Direct bulk frozen chicken breast bag. Bagged and frozen separately, but on the same day. Simultaneously defrosted for 1:40 in the microwave on the “defrost boneless poultry” cycle. Both brined for approximately 20 minutes in a 2:1 brine of iodized table salt and sugar. Food safe temperatures maintained throughout. Chicken pieces dredged in all-purpose flour, salt, and ground black pepper. Sauteed in a preheated pan with olive oil for >5 minutes per side (these are large pieces).

So, why did the one on the left exude >3 tablespoons of opaque whitish fluid while its partner exuded nothing? (No dirty jokes, please, this is a serious question!) I’m going to assume that the exuding one is safe to eat because I’ve cooked it to a safe temperature, according to my digital thermometer. Am I being foolhardy?

There’s a “defrost boneless poultry” cycle? “Food safe temperatures”?

I bought a rack of pork ribs at the store, and left them on the front seat of the truck for 30 minutes while I took a phone call, then I brought them in. They sat on the counter for another 2 hours, after which I rubbed them up, wrapped them up, and put them in the fridge (oh, I washed them off, too.) I’m going to smoke them tomorrow for 6-8 hours at roughly 200-220°. I won’t be checking for the volume of exudings. There’s only one rack, so you hogs stay away.

Who knew this was a question that plagued?

How much gas does a cow emit? [snip]

But before he explains how it works, Mitloehner wants one thing to be clear. “We’re not talking about flatulence,” he says. He emphasizes the point because his research has been dismissed as “fart science,” a label he says doesn’t do justice to the seriousness of his work.

OK, then…it’s “fart and burp science”, Dr. Touchy. Either that, or we’re going to learn quickly that cows are radiating gasses through their skin, and layman that I am, I would think that someone would have noticed that before now. And besides, what the heck’s wrong with fart science? It is, after all, plaguing us.*

Thanks, Mr. Bennett, for the Cow Post of the Week.

* Maybe that’s a new post hook for the lamest blogger in the universe — “questions that plague” something or somebody. Seems there’s always one somewhere, and we need to keep up with them.

This is what some unknown number of Mohammedans want to explode in the immediate vicinity of you, your family, your friends, your co-workers and people you’ve never even met. And they want to do it over and over and over again, until you submit. Yet there are still people who believe that we can reason with them. Un-piss them off, if you will, and they’ll go away.

Well, no. They won’t.

Heard while waiting on hold to clear up a bank problem: “Thank you for holding. Your current estimated wait time is greater than five minutes.”

Note that there is no indication how much greater. Assholes. This has been going on for 10 minutes, too.

Uno:

As a result, EOG has drilled 18 wells in Johnson County this year, fewer than originally planned, according to Papa.

Even so, EOG’s Barnett Shale production is expected to average about 50 million cubic feet per day this year, down slightly from the previous estimate of 60 million cubic feet. EOG has eight drilling rigs working in Johnson County and one in Hood County.

Hmmm…50,000,000 / 18 = 2.8MM per well X 1031 (BTUs per cf) = 2,900MM BTUs X $7.647 per MMBTUs = $22,000 per day, per well. I think. If my math is right, and it almost never is. But if it is, the next story is why I’m slowly rapidly going crazy

Two-o:

Demand for drilling rigs, led by activity in the Barnett Shale natural gas field near Fort Worth, has caused a 10 percent rise in rig costs this year and will push rates up higher through the end of 2005, the chief executive of Patterson-UTI Energy of Snyder said Thursday.

“The demand for drilling rigs is as high as we’ve seen since the 1970s, and the heaviest demand is in the Barnett Shale, followed by the Rockies,” said Cloyce Talbott, chief executive officer of Patterson-UTI.

Patterson-UTI owns and leases 398 land-based drilling rigs, about one-third of all rigs now operating in the continental U.S.

The Barnett Shale has become Texas’ largest natural gas field, with about 90 drilling rigs operating in Wise, Denton, Tarrant, Johnson and Parker Counties.

The lack of Somervell County in that list is one thing, the scarcity of rigs is another. No pipeline activity on this side of the river that I know of is the third. I don’t think I’ll be able to relax until we start turning right.

BaloneyMachine:

There isn’t a duller politician in America, not even in Indiana.

Quick show of hands here — who really & seriously want’s exciting, sexy, controversial, newsmaking politicians? OK, yall can go pick up your lifetime pass for free Jackass DVDs over there.

NB Jeffro: nobody cares if yall have to go out and cover park board meetings because the governor isn’t whooping it up in titty bars. That’s a YP, not an MP.

I admire your attempt to stay somewhat relevant, though. Rage, RAGE, my friend, against the dark night of sober-minded, serious civil servants!